Tea and Sympatico

There was lots of music this weekend. The Bank Holiday weekend kicked off with curry and beer before heading out into Manchester for a night of live music. The curries consisted of potatoes fried with mustard seeds from a really old curry recipe book of mine and the wonderful Goan Tofu Curry from the Vegan Village website. They also worked really well the next day cold in a wrap. Saturday morning breakfast was a fry up. Linda McCartney sauasages, baked beans, potatoes fried with salt, pepper and sage and vegan Eggy Bread using the Post Punk Kitchen Fronch Toast recipe. We spent the day at the Manchester Americana Festival where Matt (Quiet Loner) was on the bill. It was a lovely day with 10 live acts, nice beer and a friendly venue. On Sunday I spent the day on some artwork as I have an exhibition coming up in October! On Monday there was more live music and a day at Media City/Salford Quays with the BBC Radio 6 Roadshow. As you can see from the picture it was typica...

After Jojo blogged about it over at  Vegan in Brighton  I signed up to take part in the monthly UK vegan food swap. It's a great idea that is organised by Too Happy Vegans . I got to send a parcel to Christina over at Paperbag blog. Here's a peak at the parcel I sent her. In turn I received a great parcel from Mel at Toxic Vegan blog. I've enjoyed all the lovely goodies and was really impressed with the two gluten free chocolate treats that were included which I haven't seen before - a Happy Kitchen brownie and the Lazy Day Foods Dark Belgium chocolate tiffin. There's still time to sign up to start participating from September onwards. Make sure you sign up here before the 5th September. Who knows we may get to food swap!

Bit late but here's the lovely food from last weekend which was especially lovely as I didn't have to make any of it myself! Salad platter to share with my friend Sarah at The Bear in Todmorden . Tea was a lovely Chilean stew from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Veg book which unfortunately missed getting photographed. It was served with an amazing quick Lorraine Pascal Olive Damper bread which had been on telly that morning. Saturday was live music, beer and a late night. Sunday breakfast needed to be some comfort food and this mushroom and spinach omelette from Fat Free Vegan hit the spot. It was my first time of having a vegan omelette and I was well impressed. Snacky late lunch of crudites, humus, Cheezly Pepperjack bites and smoothies. Afternoon tea with a pot of char and peanut butter banana chocolate cupcakes. Sunday tea was pizza topped with vegan mozarella, sliced potato, smoked tofu and rocket. Mmm pizza!

Yesterday   it was 35 years since Elvis Presley died. Matt has been a massive Elvis fan since he was about 7 years old and he put on a We Remember Elvis night. It was a great night with musicians playing Elvis songs, a comedy turn, a tribute act, an Elvis lecture, quiz and raffle and a screening of the  68 Comeback Special .  My contribution was 36 large Peanut Butter Banana Choc Chip cupcakes with Elvis Cake Toppers. Recipe and cake toppers were both from Bake and Destroy . The amazing frosting was from was  Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World . and used a whole jar of peanut butter!

 Had a bit of a mooch round the charity shops in Didsbury on Saturday afternoon. We went out late and didn't expect to find much so were pleased when Matt found a nice 50s snack tray and cocktail shaker and I got a top and bangle. We also popped into Marks and Spencer's Food and were surprised to find vegan friendly Bubble and Squeak! Not tried it yet, it's gone in the freezer but it will hopefully be the star of a cooked breakfast sometime soon. If anyone reading is not sure what Bubble and Squeak is, it's a lovely comfort food dish  made from leftovers. Check out Joey's recipe over on the blog Flicking the V's. The reason for going in Mark's was to pick up some Indian starters to go with a Chicken Dansak recipe that I had veganised using some of the Chicken Style Seitan that I had leftover in the freezer made form the Vegan Diner recipe. This was Saturday night tea staying in with beer and the Olympics on tv. Sunday saw a day of lovely food wi...

Just realised when downloading these photos that I've managed to pack in a fair few so called 'superfoods' this week. I ate this for a couple of meals - qunioa with roasted onion, butternut squash, sweet potato, red pepper and courgette with alfalfa sprouts and green leaves and olives drizzled with a little flax oil. Served with a blob of red pepper humous on the side. I really enjoyed this. More oats in a jar for breakfast, this time with chia seeds. I used this recipe from the blog Oh She Glows and it was great, really filling and kept me going all morning. Served with a shot of matcha tea. I found this kilner jar at the same time that I found the spiraliser when I cleared out the cupboard of doom the other week and it is perfect for overnight oats. This is one of my favourite smoothie combinations - banana, peach, blueberries, spoonful of almond butter, flax and soya milk. On Friday we had an away day at work to go to the Tatton Biennial . It was a fab ...

It's been a weekend of good food! Last week I cleared a cupboard out and found my long lost spiraliser so Friday's lunch was courgetti and pesto. I caught the train over to Glossop after work to spend the weekend in Derbyshire. Matt made this lovely tea which consisted of brown rice, a Spanish chickpea and butternut squash stew with a Redwoods Schnitzel on the side for good measure. Sometimes you really need a dessert, especially on a Friday after a long hard week. This impromptu concoction was yummy - there was a base of crushed hobnobs topped with Alpro caramel dessert, Sojasun lemon yoghurt, grated chocolate and a cherry. In that annoying way of the world we woke up at 6.30am on Saturday and couldn't get back to sleep. So we got up and caught a bus part of the way up a very big hill and went on a five mile hike. To set us up for it was a cooked breakfast with a baked,marinated portobello mushroom, chopped up Fry's braai country herb sausage and a c...

So, I spent an hour on Tuesday evening lying on the floor in front of this Buddha! It was part of my plan to help cope with the stress that the next 10 months will bring as we head towards a massive round of redundancies at work. The area that I work in is being dismantled altogether with both my job and the one I'm currently doing as a secondment disappearing. To cope with things I'm doing my best to support my mental and physical health. I love meditation and I know it works for me from past experience but I've been finding it difficult to lock into at home so this one hour drop in class with a guided meditiation was perfect. The Manchester Buddhist Centre is a really beautiful building. I went with a friend and we had a brew after at Home Sweet Home which was a nice place but apart from soya milk was sadly lacking in anything for vegans. I was quite ill last year and although I'm loads better now I still have moments of fatigue. I've been really upping t...