Tea and Sympatico

We've recently got a car which has opened up a world of travel around the Peak District and neighbouring Yorkshire! Our first weekend tip out was to the Outside Cafe in Hathersage. Outside is a big outdoors shop which has a cafe upstairs. It's popular with walkers, climbers and the odd tourist like us. They do simple dishes like breakfasts, sandwiches and baked potatoes and vegan options are cleared marked on the menu boards. We went for a cafitiere of fresh coffee and the five and seven piece breakfast. You choose your items from the list on the board. We had the same with Matt getting extras of tomato and toast. The rest of the breakfast was a sausage, beans, mushrooms, hash browns and fried bread. I've not had fried bread since I've been vegan and I have to say it was the stand out of the meal, really tasty! The total bill was around £16 including the drinks. They also had nice organic soya milk. I'm looking forward to more trips out like this to che...

It's quite a long time since I've been to The Egg Cafe . I've not been to Liverpool for a while and the last few times I'd been to my new favourite cafe - Mello Mello . The Egg is a well established veggie cafe high up in the attic of a building. It's a really nice space, the food is well priced and home made but the menu seems to have been the same for years and a lot of the dishes are too spicy for my palate. Matt had a gig though recently and we stayed overnight. We popped into The Egg which is near Lime Street station for a quick breakfast with friends before catching the train home. I'd only had the vegan breakfast on one previous occasion and I don't remember it as anything special. I was really impressed by it this time though. The thing that especially stood out was the tofu scramble. I don't know about anyone else but I find the tofu scrambles in cafes to be very bland. This offering from The Egg though was packed with flavour and generou...

As I've been living without most of my cookbooks bar three by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, her recipes have been featuring widely on the dinner table recently. This one is an old favourite that we had for the last Bank Holiday weekend. It's not the most photogenic of meals but it tastes amazing. The green stuff is Cavolo Nero and the orange stuff is mashed sweet potato with apple from Appetite For Reduction . This is topped by tofu baked in BBQ Pomegranate sauce from Vegan With A Vengeance . This sauce has been nicknamed Elvis BBQ sauce after the generous amounts of Peanut Butter it contains! This was an previously untried recipe from Appetite For Reduction that Matt whipped up on a day off. The 'meatballs' are made from tempeh and beans and baked in the oven. They were served in a classic home made tomato sauce with broccoli and lots of nooch. They were lovely, really nutty tasting.

Here's a mini round up of some recent nice eats. Since I've moved I now have a thirty minute train journey into Manchester. I'm enjoying the time to read but I've found getting up earlier means I'm not that hungry first thing. I've been having my breakfast once I get to work at 8. I spotted the other day that M and S had some new granolas. Out of the three in the range, one was sweetened with honey, one with sugar and the one that I chose with agave. It's really different from other granolas I've had. There's loads of crunchy seeds in it and I've been loving the flavour as well as the texture. It tastes delicious with M and S soya drink which is much sweeter and creamier than other brands and which is fab in coffee and hot chocolate too. I've been aware of Isa's recipe for Chickpea Picatta for a long time and remember bloggers raving about it when Appetite For Reduction  first came out. Somehow it had just never appealed to me tho...

Back on St Patrick's Day Matt and I got the train over to Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire and met our friend Sarah for brunch. The venue was Dandelion and Burdock which is a completely vegan restaurant. The English head chef and owner spent time in the past working in California and Oregon and developed his style of vegan cooking after his son was born with a number of food intolerances. I've eaten at D and B many times and enjoy the clean, fresh style of food they offer. The day we visited there was a brunch deal. I think it was 2 courses for £12 and 3 for £15. We all went for this vegetable fritatta for our starter which was lovely and light. Sarah and Matt had a quiche style main with veggies whilst I opted for this  Irish stew and dumplings which was great comfort food without being too heavy. To finish off Sarah had a cookie sandwich whilst Matt and I got the pumpkin cheesecake with ice cream. It was great to see the restaurant nice and full and I'm...