Tea and Sympatico

I'm taking a little holiday from here for a couple of weeks. We're going away to somewhere with no internet and I'm actually looking forward to it. Living with a chronic health condition can be both mentally and physically tiring and I am really in need of a break. I try to keep cheerful but there are days when I feel like my body is fighting me. There's been lots of those days recently and I've also been feeling regrets for jobs I can't do anymore and how it limits my stamina so I don't have the same social life I once had. Anyway I don't want to sound all doom and gloom, I know a change of scene will perk me up and bring me back feeling more positive. There will be stuff appearing on here as I've prepped some stuff in advance for Mofo. I'm not expecting to manage the whole month this year but I'll do what I can and enjoy it and come mid November I'll be catching up on everyone's Mofo posts once I'm back. In preparation for our b...

Bit of a tea related post today and news of some workshops I've been doing. First off, kombucha. For those not familiar with it, Kombucha is a fermented tea drink which is good for getting pro-biotics. I've been brewing my own green tea kombucha at home for around a year and have just started to try a few shop bought flavoured ones. V Revolution sometimes stock it and I picked up this maple flavoured booch the other week. It was delicious, lovely and fizzy with a smokey maple taste. In other beverage news, we got a new kettle. I've never had a stove top kettle before but when I spotted this for £3.50 in a charity shop I couldn't resist it. The make is OXO and I love their kitchen equipment. It's a delight to use and I think I've been drinking more tea than ever. Especially after I won an Organic September competition in which the prize was Whole Earth cereals and peanut butter, Kallo rice cake products and a whole load of lovely Clipper Teas. Oh and a whee...

Yep, that's right. It's UK Chocolate Week from 10-16 October 2016. Now, every week is chocolate week in my house but saying that there are still vegan chocs I've yet to try there is such a huge range available now. In the ten years that I have been vegan I have tried lots though and am always up for sampling new ones. Here are my favourites that I've discovered so far broken down into categories by style. Dark Chocolate I came across this bar when I was the vegan reviewer for Can I Eat It? App and I got sent a range of Seed and Bean chocolate for review purposes . Vegan chocolate is very well represented in their range and the bars are great quality, Fairtrade, Organic and widely available. I fell in love this Cornish Sea Salt bar where the crunchiness of the salt pairs brilliantly with the malty flavours of the chocolate. White Chocolate I don't eat a huge amount of white chocolate but I do fancy a bit now and again. Organica was one of the first bran...

We've sampled the new Quorn Soups with vegan pieces over the last week. I'd heard about these but hadn't spotted them anywhere but when they cropped up in Heron Foods for 89p I grabbed a tub of each. Thankfully ours were not from the dodgy batch that accidentally had the non-vegan pieces added but if you've bought some recently check that it isn't dated October 14 or 16. It's a long, long time since I've had Quorn. Funnily enough I was probably one of the first people in the world to sample it. Quorn has been available on the retail market since 1993 but when I worked as a cashier and food server in British Home Stores cafes in Chester and Newcastle (1989-90) we had a couple of vegetarian dishes that included this new myco-protein that was yes, you've guessed it - Quorn! BHS, probably one of the last places you'd expect to be ground breaking with regards to veggie food but there you go! So, onto the soups. I have to admit I love making soups a...