I Heart Infinity Foods!

Not only is Infinity Foods right near where I work but it's also my local shop. I'm in there for groceries all the time. Alongside delicious local, organic fruit & veg they sell a great selection of vegan goodies including nutritional yeast, loads of great tofu's, Booja Booja truffles & ice cream and a whole world of Redwood Foods products. They also have an on site bakery which churns out delicious artisan breads, scones, chelsea buns and sometimes gluten free vegan chocolate raspberry muffins - yum!

Infinity Foods now even stocks Go Max Go bars. I'm so excited that we can now get hold of the best vegan chocolate bars ever right here in Brighton! For those of you who don't know Go Max Go bars are amazing vegan versions of Mars, Snickers, Bounty and (the US style) Milky Way.

(The above photo is from Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe because Go Max Go bar's never last long enough to be photographed around here!)

They sell some Infinity Cafe products in the chiller section which is great for lunchtimes. They always have the meze box...

Salad leaves, grilled courgette, falafel, dolmades & a selection of dips make this a great meal.

They also do organic salad boxes, I really enjoyed this one. It had a delicious dressing, yummy seeds and the gluten free pasta was great.

I really love the sandwich selection too, the vegi BLT is by far my favourite

Since going refined sugar free about 3 weeks ago (not forever, I will be eating Go Max Go bars again!) I've noticed that Infinity also do a great selection of raw agave sweetened desserts.

I tried the raw chocolate bites and the raw chocolate and almond slice.

Both are sweetened with agave and are super delicious! One chocolate bite was just enough on it's own to satisfy my chocolate craving but once I started eating the chocolate and almond slice I had to eat the whole thing in one go!

It was really good and I love that I can just pick something like this up in my lunch break.

There are plenty of other things to love about Infinity but you'll just have to come to Brighton go there and have a look for yourselves one day!

Pizza Party!

So my awesome friend and fellow blogger Kip brought some Daiya back from her recent trip to the US and was generous enough to share it with PPKers Holley, Sal, my husband Nick and I.

I was super excited as Daiya hadn't come out when I was last over in New York and I'd heard great things about it, also a pizza party sounded pretty damn fun!

Upon arrival at Kip's place I soon realised she's the bestest hostess ever! This was no ordinary pizza party, firstly she'd made canapes...

...puff pastry, cream cheese, maple bacon and apple canapes! There's a bit of a foodie craze for bacon at the moment and I was certainly super impressed with this vegan twist on the craze using Redwood's vegi bacon.

She'd also casually knocked up some garlic dough balls which impressed the hell outa my husband as I don't think he'd ever considered them to be a food you could make at home!

Pretty soon it was pizza time. This is Daiya, Redwood's bacon, chicken burger pizza! Amazing!

Here it is all plated up with salad and some delicious dough balls!

Kip also made a hawaiian pizza and a cheese & tomato pizza which were both equally delicious but I was too overexcited to remember to take pictures. I really like Daiya, It's perfect melted, really creamy and it certainly does go stringy like milk based cheeses. I hope it comes to the UK soon, it'd be great to have another meltey cheese on the market alongside Cheezly.

To continue her awesomeness Kip even made desserts!

Cookies, biscotti, homemade Newman O ice cream and marshmallow fluff. You can find one of her cookie recipes right here.

Here's my dessert plate!

Alongside Kip's desserts I had a Lazy Day Foods Millionaire shortbread (these are totally delicious and can be found in the free from section of most Waitrose supermarket's) and a piece of Sal's delicious pie.

It was a super awesome day, I love hanging out with my vegan ladies and eating until I feel a little sick!

Aloka, Iydea & VBites

Just a heads up, Aloka is now closed and VBites is open in the same location.

I promised you some reviews of great alternatives to The George and here they are!

Recently I went for dinner at Aloka with some friends and I think I've found my new favourite place to eat! The food's pay by weight and it's a little cheaper at lunchtime than at dinner. Takeout's even cheaper so it's perfect for grabbing some lunch to eat in the park now that the sun's out.

For dinner I grabbed a little bit of everything vegan and I was pretty impressed with the selection.

Right at the front there's huge piece of seitan and mushroom pie, I've never seen seitan anywhere in Brighton before so I was pretty excited! I assume it's because Vital Wheat Gluten's hard to get over here but seitan is definitely more prevalent in the US and mainland Europe. I also got a piece of cashew cheese lasagna and some mixed vegetable pasta salad to go along with my mixed green and grated carrot salad.

They also had a huge choice of vegan desserts. I went for the raw chocolate pie...

...it was seriously delicious (not to mention beautifully presented!). I think I'd expected it to be more bitter but it was just super creamy and chocolaty, it went perfectly with the berry coulis.

Recently my blogging friend Melisser and her husband Ryan came to visit so we went to VBites to test out Brighton's only all vegan restaurant. Now I didn't have the best experience last time I went there but I thought I should give it another try. Now anyone who's been reading my blog for a while will know that I used to order the George burger every time I went there but now I've found myself a new burger!

Even after removing the raw onion (blergh) this burger was still almost too big to fit in my mouth! Brilliant! It was the cheesy and rashers burger and as advertised it came with Redwood's bacon, Cheezly, mayo and salad - yum! I went for a side of chips which were just oven chips but the lack of deep frying made me feel like I was being slightly healthy whilst eating chips! VBites have quite a few different burger options alongside sandwiches, pizzas and pasta dishes.

They also have vegan desserts, there are a few different cakes to choose from and a cool looking cake conveyor belt.

I tried one of the chocolate muffins and wasn't overly impressed. It certainly wasn't awful, I enjoyed the icing, but the actual muffin was a bit dry and not really that chocolatey.

I actually enjoyed VBites that much that I took my husband there the next time we had a day off together as he was super jealous of the awesome looking burgers Melisser, Ryan and I tried last time!

This time I ordered a sandwich...

...a cheese and ham toastie on really yummy bread. This sandwich was huge!

I also gave the muffins another go, this time I tried the raspberry muffin.

It was much more moist this time but I found the icing a little sweet, I would definitely order this again though.

Nick had a slice of the chocolate cake, which was pretty good and I think made by the same company that supply Iydea, Infinity Cafe, Sanctuary Cafe & Komedia.

I'll definitely be going back to VBites again, I think it'd be a nice place to hang out in the summer.

Iydea is another great place to eat out in Brighton, they serve up vegetarian food canteen style and always have vegan options. This time I got the lentil shepherds pie with a side of green beans and cous cous salad.

The only problem here is that if you don't like spicy food there isn't always a vegan option you'd like. I often find myself wandering in there and back out again because it's occasionally a bit spicy or cheese centric for me. Vegan dishes that often pop up on the menu are vegetable roti, Thai red and green curries, sag aloo and chili. I'm always hopeful for the wellington or mushroom stroganoff!

It's also a real shame that Iydea closes at 6pm as it would be awesome to have some more dinner options in this town!

Just writing this post has made me decide that I'm definitely going back to Aloka for dinner after work tomorrow so look out for more pics of their delicious food!

The George - Part III (or The End!)

The George used to be awesome! As you can see from my previous blog posts I loved The George a lot. My favourite things to order were the awesome meaty or chicken burgers with Redwood's bacon and Cheezly. Some of my friends favourite things were the nachos with Cheezly, vegan sour cream, salsa and guacamole and the vegan banana split.

Unfortunately The George has decided that they don't really care about vegans any more. They've been taken over by local pub chain Indigo Leisure and given a new manager who certainly isn't interested in the food side of things. He's explained that he wants to move away from veganism as he doesn't want people coming into his pub, ordering food and not drinking alcohol...vegans, apparently, don't drink enough. He's planning on focusing on the drinks side of things just like all the 100's of other pubs and bars all over Brighton.

So firstly they're not going to be getting any vegan substitutes for things any more, that means no Cheezly, no Redwoods bacon, no Fry's burgers, no vegan sour cream, no vegan ice cream, no vegan cream and no vegan mayonnaise. Secondly it seems to mean that they're going to be using Quorn sausages and labelling them as vegan and thirdly it means no more of my awesome vegan cakes!

When a friend spoke to him he said that if vegans wanted to eat there they could just order stuff without the cheese, nice!

I tried to eat there again. I perused the menu and ordered the pasta with tomato garlic sauce served with a side of garlic bread.

Now I'm not suggesting that this was by any stretch the worst thing I've ever eaten in a pub but it's nowhere close to how awesome The George used to be. The pasta was pretty bland and boring and the garlic bread...well that's just toast! It's nothing I couldn't throw together myself for a quick, cheap weeknight dinner and even though I do say so myself, I think I'd do it better.

There are loads of other great places to eat in Brighton, places that are vegetarian owned and operated and places that actually care about their vegan clientele so join me in saying screw you to The George try eating out at Aloka, Iydea, Terre a Terre, Wai Kiki Moo Kau, VBites, Infinity Foods Cafe, Red Veg, Food For Friends or Planet India instead.

Stay tuned for my reviews of VBites, Iydea and Aloka coming very soon...

London Part III : Zilli Green

*Sadly Zilli Green is now closed*

As Nick and I had a week off we decided to head to London for the day to have some food and to do some shopping. I really wanted to try Aldo Zilli's new vegetarian restaurant Zilli Green. I'd had a look at the website and there were loads of vegan options so I was really excited.

We arrived at about 3.30 in the afternoon so the place was a little empty but I got the feeling from the amount of phone calls they were receiving that you'd definitely need to book for dinner.

We shared some bread to start as we were both ridiculously hungry after hours of shopping.

This was no ordinary bread basket! It was organic and filled with seeded bread, french bread and the softest most delicious focaccia I've ever had the pleasure of eating, there was oil on the table for dipping which was delicious and obviously really high quality.

To start I had the Quinoa and Wild Mushroom Mediterranean Sushi Roll.

This was not exactly what I was expecting from sushi but the clue's in the name, it's Mediterranean sushi. It was seriously amazing and I never thought I'd say that about a sushi with no nori or white rice! The flavours worked perfectly together and I really enjoyed the crispy side salad, I'd go as far as to say that if you visit Zilli Green you have to order this.

I'd already decided on my main before we arrived, just the idea of Tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms and white truffle oil was enough to make my mouth water.

I swear this is the best pasta dish I've ever eaten! It was perfectly cooked, as you'd expect at an Italian restaurant, but it was also really creamy which is something restaurants sometimes find hard with vegan dishes. This is another must order!

I was SO overexcited when I saw the dessert menu, this is the place most vegetarian places fall a little short in my opinion but here there were loads of options, look!

I love chocolaty desserts so I had to go for the Warm Pecan and Chocolate Chip Brownie although I was very tempted by the Limoncello Cheese Cake.

This was a damn good brownie! I wasn't expecting to like it so much as I'm pretty fussy when it comes to cakes but this totally rocked. It was warm and gooey with delicious nutty pieces, it also came with vegan double cream but I hate cream on desserts so I didn't add it.

I absolutely cannot wait to go back there, I'd totally go back to London just to eat here again!

Our Wedding!

So I didn't exactly manage to keep up with blogging in the run up to the wedding. I certainly intended to but when you set yourself tasks such as stamping every ones names letter by letter onto place cards & the table plan there isn't much time for anything else!

We decorated the venue ourselves the day before with a little help with lighting from a professional decoration company.

I incorporated place cards and favour bags into one thing by filling little bags with Raspberry Ruffles and tying people's names onto them.

One of the things I found hardest was finding the dress. I'm not overly girlie when it comes to clothing and usually wear skate shorts & t-shirts so even getting my head around the idea of wearing a dress was difficult! I toyed with the idea of wearing shorts & a tux t-shirt but I ended up deciding that I wanted to feel a bit more special than that. I also knew I'd never find anything I liked in the shops so I asked my amazing friend and bridesmaid Tabitha to make the dress.

We spent SO long shopping for fabric, partly because I'm fussy but also because every fabric I was totally in love with was silk! It was really frustrating partly because we really didn't have much time to plan the wedding (we did the whole thing in 6 weeks) and partly because I'm used to veganism being easy! This is the only time I've even found it remotely difficult, eventually we found something I liked and Tabitha made the dress in just a couple of weeks.

Our wedding was totally awesome even if I do say so myself. I couldn't stop grinning at my wonderful husband all day! Here's us using the photo booth...

The ceremony was really relaxed and lovely and at the reception we had awesome music, games, guitar hero and all the food was vegan! Having only been to all vegan restaurants a couple of times being able to eat (and drink) anything was super fun.

Our caterers were Veg Out who were absolutely amazing, I'd recommend them to anyone. They came up with an amazing menu...

...and even included a couple of my favourite picnicey dishes, my friend Kip's Blue Sheese Dip and my slightly adapted version of the Veganomicon Brooklyn Deli Macaroni Salad. Most of the photos below were taken by Kip from Messy Vegetarian Cook as I didn't manage to take a single photo on the day!

Before dinner there were canapes to go with the champagne. They included a totally delicious broccoli & cream cheese mini quiche and some filo pastry tarts with an amazing creamy mushroom filling.

Here's the Macaroni Salad and in the foreground you can see one of my favourite dishes from Veg Out their Cauliflower and Asparagus tart. More than one of my omnivorous guests said that they couldn't believe you could make something so creamy without cream or cheese, as a vegan I know that of course you can but it was awesome to be able to show other people this! I had about 3 slices and am certainly going to be trying to get hold of the recipe.

Here are a few more pics, Potato Salad...

...Dolmades...

... Tofu and Vegetable Kebabs...

...Red Quinoa Kedgeree with Tofu...

...Green Bean Salad with a lemon, mint and parsley dressing ...

...and Sausage Rolls.

After dinner there was dessert, my favourite part of most meals! We had a chocolate fountain with Dandies marshmallows, chopped Go Max Go bars & fruit for dipping.

Veg Out also made a totally delicious Lime Mousse which was made with avocado, although we didn't tell people this until after dinner! Even my dessert hating dad enjoyed this and I had two.

Of course their had to be cupcakes! We used The Vegan Cake Girl for these as I'd read great reviews about their cakes on my friend Melisser's blog and their prices were insanely reasonable! The cupcakes were beautiful, sparkly and really delicious...

... we ordered Mint Chocolate, Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Orange, Raspberry, Lemon Kiss & Chocolate Cherry. My favourites were the Mint Chocolate and the Chocolate Cherry and Nick loved the Chocolate Orange. We also ordered some of her Blueberry Muffins to take to the hotel for breakfast the next day, we put a few out at the wedding in case some people weren't into cupcakes but I didn't try one until the next day. I was SO glad I'd decided to order some, they are seriously the best muffins I have ever eaten and another thing I'm going to be trying to get the recipe for that's for sure!

We stayed at the Kemp Townhouse hotel for a couple of nights after the wedding, it's not very far from our house but it was nice to pretend to be tourists in Brighton for a day! The room we stayed in was gorgeous and the owners were happy to make us vegan breakfasts as we let them know our dietary requirements in advance. The full English breakfast was great with Sausages, Vegi Bacon, Mushrooms, Tomatoes, Baked Beans, Hash Browns and Toast. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a picture. We also dined out at Terre a Terre but boringly I ordered something I'd had and also blogged about before!

We're just getting towards the end of our mini-moon, we took a week off work as we can't afford a proper honeymoon just yet but hopefully we're going on a day out to London tomorrow. We really want to try out the new veggie restaurant Zilli Green and visit Vx the Secret Society of Vegans new London store. I'll be writing about them soon!