Tea and Sympatico

I am lucky to live in a small town that caters really well for vegans. We have Pico Lounge which is part of the Loungers chain and offers a vegan menu, Ayubowan Sri Lankan restaurant that has clearly labelled tasty vegan dishes and fab coffee shops like Twig in the station that offers plant milks and sells Ten Acre crisps. We also have a great independent health food shop in Peak Of Health and of course not forgetting the Globe pub where all the food is vegan and they even make a range of icecream! And now there is a new addition to the vegan offer. One 17 Bakery closed in January and we were all worried that they might have closed down. I'd always liked their bread and Frank and Jane the owners are lovely. Luckily for us they had decided to take a few weeks off and were plotting the introduction of lots of new lines to the bakery. What they have done is something unique. As well as the standard range you'd expect from a bakery they now have a focus on low calorie, glu...

It was Matt's birthday last week so we had both our families over to celebrate. We made two huge roasted vegetable lasagnes served with green salad and garlic bread. If you've not discovered this super easy bechamel sauce recipe from Deerly Beloved Bakery you should definitely check it out. It's brilliant and is all done in a blender with no heating and stirring involved! It went down well and most people had seconds.  For dessert I made two cakes. The first was a coffee and walnut cake from the Cake Scoffer. This is an old favourite that I've made many times and is a great cake recipe particularly for new vegan bakers. The Scoffer series of booklets were written by Ronny who lives near me in Glossop and they are all brilliant. The sequel Return Of the Cake Scoffer is still available but the original Cake Scoffer is now out of print. There's a few copies on Amazon for over £20 so if you do spot one at a vegan fair you should definitely snap it up! There...