Tea and Sympatico

We had a Cake Liberation Front Manchester meet up this week and in the five years we've been doing it I have to say that I think it was one of my favourite meet ups so far! The format is that people bring vegan goodies to share. There's a emphasis on sweet baked goods but savoury and raw items are very welcome too.Once everyone arrives and the dishes are labelled and set out it's a big all you can eat buffet! Here's just a selection of the goodies we got to try. It's always good to see some classics alongside more experimental dishes and these chocolate and cherry brownies were absolutley melt in the mouth heaven! Apparently the secret was lots of melted chocolate alongside cocoa powder to make them extra chocolately. We had a good showing of raw and also gluten free dishes with raw cookies, gluten free fruity soda bread, gluten free strawberry cheesecake and this amazing raw and gluten free banofee pie. Sometimes you can't beat simple good quali

I thought I'd blog about a product that's new to me which I discovered this week. I've been making a big effort to shop locally recently and we're lucky to have both an independent greengrocers and a health food shop in our little town where I can get most of our weekly shop. I picked up these Quinoa flakes from the health food shop - Peak of Health the other day. I've never used them before and I admit that I had to Google for ideas of what to use them for. Whilst I was in Peak of Health I also picked up this new flavour of Provamel yoghurt - orange redbush! First up was a big smoothie made with banana, mixed berries, almond butter (I'm in love with Meridian Almond Butter), Orange Redbush yoghurt, Oatly, flax oil, maca and a quarter of a cup of the quinoa flakes. This was tasty and fuelled me for a good few hours. The second breakfast I made was Coconut, Mango Porridge. I used half oats and half quinoa flakes which were cooked in a mix of water a

If anyone is looking for a cake to bake for Easter weekend and you have a copy of the current Vegan Life Magazine then I can totally recommend the Pistachio Cake with Orange Blossom Water that's pictured below. I made this a few weeks ago for Mother's Day and I'm still thinking about it! As well as being topped with chopped pistachios you grind some up to a fine powder and add these to the cake batter which gives it a lovely unusual texture. The cake is full of fragrant flavours from the nuts, orange blossom water and cardamon and is really delicious. The recipe is taken from a new book called Easy Vegan by Sue Quinn . The mag features four recipes from the book and we've also tried and enjoyed the Potato and Spinach Vindaloo recipe as well, albeit a tamed down version minus most of the chillis and with mild instead of hot curry powder so I could eat it too. Has anyone else made any of the recipes from the magazines that you'd recommend?