Tea and Sympatico

Glossop the town where I live is famous for having a pub with a completely vegan food offer called The Globe. The only lunchtime that the Globe is open is a Sunday and they've not had much competition until now. However, the pub nearest to my house, The Oakwood, has recently had a refurbishment. It's not just the decor, the menu has had a revamp too and I was excited to see that they have several vegan options. Even more exciting was that they do something that nowhere else in Glossop does, not even the Globe - they offer a vegan Sunday lunch. The food is of the home cooked and hearty persuasion. On the day that we went the roast part consisted of fritters made from nuts and pulses, lovely fresh veg and perfect roast potatoes. I was also impressed to get a big jug of gravy on the side. This hit the spot and I'll definitely be going back. I also loved the new light fittings. Can you tell what they are made from - yep, old cut glass drinks decanters.

Matt's nephew has a business buying and selling vintage guitars and amps and Matt did a favour for him the other week by picking up an amp from just outside of Bolton. I went along as well as it was a great excuse to visit somewhere I've been hearing good things about for a long time. The Kitchen is on Great Moor Street in Bolton town centre. It's a vegetarian cafe run by the Lakamka Workers Co-Op. They sell the usual veggie fayre and also specialise in Turkish food with dishes such as Gozleme which is a  turkish bread stuffed with things like spinach, mushroom or potato. As it was around Brunch time when we got there we opted for breakfasts. These were great with particularly tasty bread and lovely sausages. On the way back home we came through North Manchester so we took a detour to another Co-Op that we hadn't visited before. Village Greens is in Prestwich and reminded me of a mini version of Unicorn Grocery . Unlike Unicorn it's not exclus...

Vegan 'pulled pork' made from jackfruit has been around for a while and I've eaten it from V Revolution but it was only recently that we had our first go of making it at home. We used the method from this recipe from the Blissful Basil website and I made a BBQ sauce using a couple of different recipes from books tweeking it to bring the heat down to suit my chilli intolerant palate. You need to make sure that your tinned jackfruit is the type in water not syrup. It's available in lots of Asian shops. We found it in ASM supermarket in Ashton. It's amazing how much it actually looks like pork! It was soooo good and pretty easy to make. I'm looking forward to trying it again. I picked up a couple of bottles of this Chipotle, Smokey Bourbon sauce for 79p in Home Bargains recently and am going to try that next time instead of the homemade BBQ.

I picked this spice blend up the other day reduced to 15p in Marks and Spencers Food! With cinnamon, ginger, juniper, nutmeg, black pepper and clementine oil you can see how it was sold as a Christmas blend. As I had all the store cupboard ingredients the natural choice was to make chocolate chip cookies. I think this would also be great with muffins and I'm thinking of using it in the pumpkin muffins from Post Punk Kitchen next which is one of my all time favourite muffin recipes. Ingredients - Makes 12 cookies 1 cup of plain flour 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder 1/4 teaspoon of salt 2 and 1/2 teaspoons of Christmas spice blend 1/2 cup of icing sugar 1/4 cup of soft brown sugar 1/2 cup of vegan margarine 100g (a bag) of dark chocolate chips Extra caster sugar for rolling the cookies in Method Heat the oven to 350F/ 180C/ Gas 4. Prepare a baking tray by greasing it or use a silpat silcone mat. In a bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and s...

We recently were up in Skipton in North Yorkshire for an engagement party. The morning after we decided to skip breakfast in the hotel and went for a walk round the town hoping to find somewhere for some breakfast. We weren't holding out much hope for a veggie breakfast but thought that we may be able to find somewhere with beans on toast or something similar. We were therefore delighted when we stumbled upon Filmore and Union. Filmore and Union are a Yorkshire chain who specialise in clean eating and it really reminded me of places I've eaten at in the States. Whilst not a veggie establishment they have several clearly marked vegan items. I went for quinoa porridge made with coconut milk, served with stewed apples and cinnamon. The little extra jug of warmed coconut milk on the side was a really nice touch. After a big pizza and lots of wine the evening before this was a perfect breakfast, healthy yet still hitting the spot as comfort food. The coffee was great too. ...