Reviews

Froothie Optimum VAC2 Air Vacuum Blender Review

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Froothie Optimum VAC2 air vacuum blender

Another day, another gadget to review. Oh yes, it’s a hard life being a Froothie Ambassador. My Froothie Optimum G2.1 blender has kept me happy over the last couple of years but when Froothie told me they had a new blender out – the Froothie Optimum VAC2 air vacuum blender – and this was a special one with magical air vacuuming properties and would I like to try it I thought yes please, despite me not having a clue what air vacuuming meant. Was it like air guitaring, I wondered. I can do air vacuuming better than I can do real vacuuming. 

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Breakfast, tofu

One Pot Tofu Scramble with Spinach and Tomatoes

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vegan tofu scramble with spinach, done in one pan

Is it possible to use the word ‘brunch’ without sounding like a pretentious wanker? I’m not sure I’ve even heard anyone say it in real life out loud but I’ve been for breakfast-type food mid-morning a couple of times in the last month at The Bistro at Lympne Castle and going for breakfast in a castle is pretentiously wanky enough without bringing the word ‘brunch’ into it too (if castles aren’t your thing, there are plenty of other places to get food and loads of discount vouchers about). Despite serving avocado on toast (sorry, I mean ‘crushed avocado on toasted sourdough’), The Bistro isn’t pretentious or wanky in the slightest and you don’t have to dress up like a dog’s dinner to eat there and ever since I ate their scrambled eggs on toast with spinach, tomato and seeds, I kept thinking about it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to go back to The Bistro in the last couple of weeks, so I decided to recreate their scrambled eggs on toast with spinach and tomatoes with my own vegan version made with tofu.

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Air Frying

Vegan Rainbow Sandwich with Airfried Vegetables

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vegan rainbow sandwich

I broke my foot. People keep asking me if I broke it by slipping over in the recent snow and, as much as I’d like to say, ‘yes, it was the bastard snow, dammit’, the honest answer is, ‘no, I fell over pissed on the way home from a party’. That was about four weeks ago and the nurse said it takes about eight weeks for a broken foot to heal, so I should be about halfway to being able to walk again without wearing a big boot thing, yay. Oh, and in case you’re interested – and people seem to be – the bit of foot that broke was a couple of metatarsals – you know, the bits of feet no one had heard of until David Beckham broke his. So, you could say, I bent it like Beckham. Ha!

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Competitions and giveaways, Reviews

Crafty Nectar Craft Cider Review & Giveaway

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Crafty Nectar cider subscription box

Cider’s had a varied reputation over the years. For me, it was the first alcoholic drink I started drinking regularly (42p a half down The George in Wanstead in 1985 when I was 15 [ssh, don’t tell my mum]). After my early years of drinking sweet Woodpecker underage in the pub, I progressed onto what I thought were more sophisticated dry ciders such as Diamond White and Merrydown (okay, I only drank Merrydown to get hammered, like everyone else, but Diamond White and Merrydown came in glass bottles and not tins, so I thought they were posh). But apart from cider being the tipple of teenagers, other images conjured up by cider drinkers are:

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Competitions and giveaways, Veganuary

Review & Book Giveaway: Veganuary: How To Go Vegan

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Veganuary banner

I did Veganuary in 2016. I didn’t do it in 2017 because – to be blunt and because I haven’t really got a valid reason – I couldn’t be bothered. However, I’m now practically plant-based, partly thanks to moving to a town with a veggie/vegan cafe just down the road and an Italian restaurant that has vegan cheese for their pizzas and partly thanks to living on my own again and being able to eat whatever the flipping flop I want no matter how vegan it is. (Yes, me and The Meat Eater have parted ways but don’t worry, it’s all amicable. And I mean properly amicable, not amicable as in publicly-announce-on-Facebook-it’s-amicable-then-publicly-slag-each-other-off-on-Facebook-a-week-later-amicable.)

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Round Ups, Vegan

Quick and Easy Vegan Winter Foods

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collage of easy vegan winter food

I love the summer. I love the sun and the heat and it motivates me to drink more smoothies and juice and eat more salad. I moved to the seaside in July and although I thought it must be illegal for it to be anything but the summer at the seaside, it’s not, and winter arrived along with the cold and the rain and the wind and the sleet and the snow just like everywhere else.

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Infographic

Infographic: What a Vegetarian World Would Look Like

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Vegetarianism and veganism is unarguably on the upturn. I mean, even McDonald’s is offering a vegan burger now, and the-McDonald’s-of-the-pizza-world-i.e.-nothing-like-pizza-really Pizza Hut is offering vegan cheese on their pizzas (although the far superior Zizzi and Pizza Express got there first), so things are definitely on the up. Who knows, maybe one day there’ll be more choice on all restaurant menus than just a flipping veggie lasagne or – sigh – a veggie risotto.

But vegetarianism and veganism is about more than just food (apparently) and so here’s an infographic outlining some of what a vegetarian world would look like.

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Cookbooks

Cookbook: My Vegan Travels by Jackie Kearney

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My Vegan Travels by Jackie Kearney

Although I’ve been a fan of Masterchef since Loyd Grossman presented the show in its primary-coloured-cornered olden days, it’s rare for me to remember any of the contestants. Jackie Kearney, however, is one I remember because, as far as I was aware at the time, she was the first vegetarian cook to be on Masterchef and, not only that, she was the first vegetarian chef to get to the finals in the show. (I also remember Jackie because, despite being vegetarian, she cooked meat on the show, which I thought was a shame but I suppose she couldn’t just sit out the rounds where they had to cook badgers’ eyeballs with prawn brain jus or whatever weirdo things they make them cook on there).

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