Tea and Sympatico

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a little road trip Matt and I took to Oswestry and Chester. A week after we did a second one for Matt's birthday. Our overnight destination was Morecambe with a stop off in Preston for lunch. We've visited the Whaletail Cafe a few times before and always enjoyed the food and this time was no exception. Matt went for the salad platter about that came with a serving of home made hummus and some lovely olives. It was a cold wintery day and I felt that I needed something hot to eat so I picked this mushroom and grilled tofu roll. This really hit the spot and is something I need to recreate at home. It would be a perfect Sunday morning breakfast roll. Underneath the Whaletail is a lovely old school wholefoods co-operative called Single Step . I was excited to find some turmeric root there as I've been wanting to try making turmeric spiced milk for a while as a bedtime drink. Once in Morecambe we headed to a Toby Carvery for Matt...

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...

I'm afraid I'm currently back to having no computer, hence the lack of blogging recently. The laptop I bought about a month ago broke almost immediately and I ended up returning it and getting a refund. I've finally decided to go for a refurbished model through someone we've met locally who runs a computer business and hopefully I'll have that soon. As an added bonus he is also going to get us started on kombucha brewing! Does anyone make their own kombucha and do you have any tips or ideas for flavours? And talking of brewing check out these vegan beers. We've had a couple of little road trips in the last few weeks. Our first one was to Oswestry on the Welsh border. We came across a great family run wine and beer shop called Twelve Green Bottles . As someone who used to work in a wine shop I was really impressed with this place. It was really nicely set out AND they had marked products as vegan on their price labels which is not something you see very ofte...

Just recently I've been all about quinoa. Matt and I have been doing the  5:2  diet and quinoa is fab for low calorie meals on the two days a week that we eat limited calories. I'm thinking of doing a blog post of our experience of 5:2 if anyone is interested. Above is the Black Bean and Quinoa salad from Appetite For Reduction . Below from the same book is Quinoa Puttanesca. These were both fast day lunches, full of flavour and nice and filling. I spotted a range of instant pots from Artisan Grains in a health food shop the other day and can report that this Moroccan Spiced Couscous, Quinoa, Freekah and Lentils was tasty and filling enough for a fast day meal. They'd be great for camping too. Back in the day when I was a reviewer for Can I eat It? App I discovered some amazing companies such as Artisan Grains who make these pots and also Mothergrain Quinola whose quinoa range I reviewed here . Recently Mothergrain contacted me to ask if I'd like so...

Inspired by my friend over at the  My Cat Loves Daiya  blog I've been using my local library for recipe inspiration. The weather has been awful this week, so wet and windy, and I was drawn to this little book of recipes for Hot Toddies. The book has large section of alcoholic hot beverages with things such as mulled wine and cider, glogg, hot buttered rum and of course hot toddy. Towards the back is a non-alcoholic section and I was attracted to the recipe for Moroccan Spiced Coffee first. I used decaff coffee for this as it is what Matt drinks at home. I usually drink one cup of caffeinated coffee a day and then switch to decaff if I want anymore. I also don't like caffeinated first thing in the morning so this was a good breakfast blend for me. To two ounces of coffee you add a spice blend made from a cinnamon stick, two teaspoons of toasted sesame seeds, a quarter of a teaspoon of fennel seeds and the seeds from three cardamon pods. We tried this as both black uns...

The other week we both had stinking colds that started on a Monday and lasted a whole seven days. By the time it got to the weekend we were fed up and in need of some serious comfort food. Here's a selection of what went down in our kitchen. I did an oats based breakfast post the other week in which I raved about the Apple and Cinnamon Porridge Bake from the first Delicously Ella book. I tried another baked oats recipe, this time from her website and this was amazing as well. This is Baked Banana, Blueberry and Raisin Oatmeal served with some coconut yoghurt and some toasted coconut chips (picked up in Home Bargains for 49p). Seriously, this was such a nice breakfast that I was still thinking about it at teatime! I occasionally break out the toastie bags for a toasted sandwich and this was one such occasion. I'd made leek and potato soup and it was accompanied by these avocado, tomato, olive, spinach and parmesan toasties. I've never put spinach in a toastie befo...

We've been in our house for a year and a half and we've had to do a lot of redecorating after an extensive rewire when we moved in. We are nearing the end with just the living room left to do and I thought I'd show you what our spare room looks like after decorating it. I loved reading everyone's Kitchen Tours during Mofo so I thought it would be fun to see where people's blogging spaces are as well as their cooking spaces. This room is at the back of the house and overlooks the yard and those of our neighbours. It's a cosy little room and gets some nice light on a sunny day. I decided on a blue palette for this room but keeping with warmer tones of blue although that might not be clear form my bad iPhone pics! The photo of the door below gives the best colour match. The first thing I did was get rid of the double bed that we had in here as it took up most of the space in the room. We donated that to our local furniture project and replaced it with a sofa...