Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival

Quite a mouthful...literally! (oh I'm cringing at the awfulness of this pun already)

We took a delightful wander up and down New Road, Brighton today perusing the many stalls of the Food and Drink festival. Mushrooms, cider, jam, sausage, falafel, fish, all colours of the food spectrum represented.

Spied this awesome salad from a distance, I've never eaten flowers/petals before and it's something I really want to try! With so much food available though, salad wasn't going to cut it for lunch.

We then came across Titbits catering who had some really tempting nibbles on offer. They run a pop-up restaurant just down our road every Friday which we've been meaning to visit for ages but it's quite pricey and the right special occasion just hasn't arrived yet.

I went for a sweetcorn fritter with fresh tomato salsa and Josh opted for a sundried tomato sausage roll.

They both tasted sooo good and were presented so nicely, I almost don't want to mention that josh found a pebble when he tried a bite of mine! Luckily there were no broken teeth so we moved on unperturbed.

There were a few freebies on offer along the course of the road. I tried some delicious olives, if only my purse could stretch to such whims as my stomach demands!

We finally decided on trying this for lunch:

I was drawn in by the words 'banana curry' and thrilled to find out everything was Vegan. The kind lady working the stall talked me through everything. (I've got quite a low spice threshold!) Then she filled up my tub with mixed 'stir fried veg', layered on banana curry, added chili bean sauce and then topped with avacado and lime on top. We added a tiny bit of lime pickle at the corner too.

Fortunately we were less than a minutes walk from the pavilion gardens so sat in the sun having a munch! One portion of this was enough for both of us but we still had space to share a slice of Chocolate cake from the Vbites stall! (no photo as we were in a rush for the cinema, guess I'll just have to go back again!)

Is this my longest blog post ever? Big hug for sticking around. xx

Short-post-Saturday?

Just a quick post today as there weren't many vegan happenings, happening.
For dinner tonight I made one of A Girl Called Jack's recipes. I've been following her blog religiously for the last 4-5 months. Some great cheap vegan recipes there (although she was only fully vegan for lent this year) and she also posts some fiery political stuff which I love.
Anyway here's some rubbish phone pics of these burgers! (and my bev of choice for tonight)

Planning a trip to Brighton food fest tomorrow if the weather holds up. Out with the camera!

Puff pastry Pizza

This is Joshs, he's far better at cheese spreading than me!

We used to make this aallll the time at our old house, since we moved we've just stopped for some reason, possibly because we mainly have the kitchen to ourselves now so I can spend longer 'slaving'. over the hob ;) anyway I was reminded of it by one of @kitsunesuki's recent instagrams and it tasted even better than i remembered.
 This is such a good no brainer meal. Just a pasta sauce/pizza sauce/tomato puree base, whatever veggies you've got in the fridge or freezer and optional cheese. We used the ready rolled puff pastry from Aldi but have also used jus-roll etc before. Equally good.
Today ours included broccoli, onion, mushrooms, frozen peppers and frozen sweetcorn and we topped it with Vegusto melty cheese. Vegusto is the best vegan cheese I've ever tried, unfortunately it's mightily expensive

(like all the good cheeses I guess) at £7.50 for 400g so I don't buy it too much. - And I try to stop the other half buying it all the time too!

(I made it really big to make up for forgetting so far this month!)

P.S. I just snuck to the kitchen for a couple of spoons of late night peanut butter hehehe.

Work with it, erm, Thursday!

Helloo, So I'm totally mixing up these themes ay?!
I did try to think of something I really don't like but to no avail, as long as it's prepared properly I'll love it! Instead I thought I'd try something that I've been wary of for a while, Green Smoothies.

You've got to admit, the thought of yummy milkshake + spinach is totes gross... until you've tried it! I'd seen hundreds of instagram photos and decided to give my own a go. This was the one I recreated although the banana I used wasn't frozen and it worked just fine. I now know the recipe by heart as I made it 4 days running! For anybody who has never tried a green smoothie it's important to know that you add the greens to be healthy, and you can't taste it. I was imagining some weird savoury sweet mush before I took my first gulp.

Now that I've run out of spinach I'll be looking for a new recipe to try out (even if I need to buy more spinach!) so if you know of any spectacular ones please let me know in the comments!

Je suis occupé

These past few days have been mental and today was my last french lesson eek! Tomorrow onwards I will have time for some proper posts (including some Mac n Cheese lovin' don't you worry).
Lunch today was garlic-y mushrooms with parsley on toast and for dinner it was the ol' faithful stir fry with a bit of stem ginger thrown in as I was feeling a little wacky in the kitchen. Made a nice change but will be sticking to proper ginger root in future!
What's a blog post without some piccys?:

Also, I have to say I am lurrrving VeganMoFo! I've only had time to see a few blogs and there's so much on my to-read list, can't wait! Plus it's so great to see everyone leaving comments and getting involved!

Oh and one last thing. I won tickets to Vegfest London!!!! I've been meaning to buy tickets for ages but thought I'd just give this competition a go when it caught my eye on The Mighty Fork facebook page (mmmm you gotta check out those hot dog pics, foodporn at it's finest!) and I got lucky! Who else is going? Anyone travelling any long distances? I'm lucky as we're super close to London in Brighton! (And we get our own VegFest of course!) If you haven't done so yet, buy your tickets here.

Monday Lunch

This is (don't quote me on this) the easiest of all the packed lunches - a salad comprising solely of chunks of red pepper, carrot and cucumber. With a little pepper and olive oil to boot.
I ate mine in the sunny park this lunchtime with some bread and butter and a library book that I'm whizzing through. Here's a rubbish photo taken with my phone!

Colourful non?

Sorry about the short post today, It's dissertation deadline day meaning there's some celebrating to be doing!

Cheesy Birthday Biscuits

Every one of ChefChloe's recipes that I've tried I've absolutely loved. Remember those mexicali sliders?!!! Mental note to buy her book next time payday comes around.
So today was a certain little guy's 3rd birthday party and after trying out these cheesy style biscuits a while a go I thought they'd make a great addition to the nibbles - especially in teddy bear shapes!

To make approx 2 cups little biscuits:
1 cup flour
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
A good sprinkling of turmeric
1 tsp salt
Pepper (to taste)
5 tbsp Marge (I use Aldi's Solesta Sunflower Spread)
1+tbsp cold water
Vegetable oil

1. Mix dry ingredients with a fork.
2. Work in the marge - best in a food processor but I don't have that luxury so I got at it with the fork again!
3. Add 1 tbsp water and combine, add more water until a good dough is formed, shouldn't need more than 3 tbsp.
4. Grease 2 baking trays with a little vegetable oil and preheat oven to 180C.
5. Roll out half the dough on a floured surface to about half a centimetre (I have tiled kitchen surfaces now, nightmare!)
6. Use either a biscuit cutter or a knife to cut your shapes, between 2-5cm long work well.
7. Bake in the oven for 12 minutes and check, might need a few more minutes but once the biscuits start to develop a more golden colour, they're ready!

I hadn't realised how simple this is before writing it down, a great alternative to crisps and I'm sure there are quite a few flavour combinations possible too. Different flours, a little paprika in the mix perhaps?

ALSO, I read that Turmeric + Pepper = cancer prevention! Sooo, it's ok that I ate 2/3 of a batch in one sitting last week?...