Girl, Excited.

I've had a very exciting week this week; Mr T and I booked a little holiday and we're off to Berlin next week! I've wanted to visit this city for over a year and am so super excited to spend three days there. The research we've done for food places has pretty much tripled this excitement!
I've also been asked to contribute something for a record release show in two weeks, which is very exciting but also a little scary in that I only have two weeks to come up with something! I'm thinking of a mini zine filled with bits and bots from this blog, and articles that I've been writing and keeping to myself.
My sister came home a couple of days ago from a months holiday, so I baked her some chocolate cupcakes with a blob of strawberry jam in the middle. Yum!

Vegan Brunch.

I've got some cupcakes baking in the oven (chocolate with a blob of strawberry jam inside, yum!) and just enough time before I have to make pizzas, to tell you that I bought this lovely ladies book yesterday:





Isa Chandra Moskowitz is an amazing vegan chef; she's also written Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and Veganomicon, and as I've just seen on Amazon: Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (!!!).

Vegan Brunch (brunch being the second best meal of the day; LUNCH is my favourite. So versatile) offers sweet, savoury, side orders and bread recipes, all of which I really can't wait to get cracking on! It's my birthday in a month, and I'm hoping for a waffle maker so I can get on with trying the many waffle recipes; gingerbread waffles, yes please!

Cupcake Sneak Peek!

Here's a sneaky peeky at the cupcake experiments I made yesterday!

All of the cupcakes have the same basic cupcake: vanilla, cinnamon, yum. Except for a few which I put jam in the middle. They taste so good, but I needed to put a lot more jam in. Next time!

I really just wanted to experiment with icing, and I really liked some of them:

From the top:

Squirty cream with a cherry on top, and a dusting of cocoa powder.

Peppermint icing with a peppermint cream on top.

Jam filled cupcake with buttercream icing.

I'm putting together a flickr account of all my cupcakes, and trying to make a sort of cupcake portfolio to apply for jobs. Why is it so hard to write your CV, without sounding like a total div? It's impossible really. Anyway, I'll show you guys the flickr when it's looking a bit fuller; I'm trawling through hundreds of photos on my laptop at the moment trying to find photos of all the good things, and kicking myself when I realise I never photographed some of the best things; like Mr Tom II (the return of the new and improved version).

Sometimes I think I'm a bit too obsessed with food. This morning I had a shower using shampoo that smells of parma violets, and lemon sorbet shower gel. And now I'm listening to Fiona Apple. Yep.

Cooking Round Up.

Sometimes it's the turn of Mr T to do some cooking, and he came up with the brilliant idea of NACHOS for lunch!

Tortilla chips, guacamole, salsa, mayola, sheese, chilli, oh my! I loved the way the chilli made the chips slightly softer but soaked them up with flavour.

We tried Smoked Sheese, which is so good. I ate it raw, which isn't something I can usually say about vegan cheese.

I made white chocolate and strawberry cupcakes for treats afterwards. I made them listening to Dr Dre on Spotify, it was fun! I definitely felt more street afterwards. Then we did some line dancing to Dire Straits, with our cat, Rasputin. It was a good afternoon. No photos of the line dancing sadly, but here's one of the cupcakes:

The cupcakes were so super nice I decided not to ice them, which isn't like me! Usually I like to pile a cupcake with icing, but they were sweet enough, and I wanted to be able to taste the strawberry. If I iced it, I would have made butter icing with grated white chocolate on top. Or maybe strawberry icing. Maybe with a cherry on top.

A few weeks ago we collaborated and made an awesome cannelloni, avec salad and garlic bread:

I'd never had cannelloni before, and was very impressed! Although we didn't make it 'proper'; there was no kind of cheesy sauce or anything, just tomato with veggies, but I really liked it!

This week I'm trying to bake a whole heap of cupcake ideas and photograph them all, get people to taste test them and tell me what they think. I want to bake more themed cupcakes, i.e. Mr Tom Cupcakes, maybe some ginger biscuits or maybe fry's peppermint creams. Yum!

VBites II

I wanted to develop a previous blog about Heather Mills' latest venture; VBites. The website is fully launched and shows just how much is on her menu, and all completely vegan.
I watched her give a brief cooking lesson on This Morning, where she made a lovely lemongrass 'chicken' with coconut rice, and the recipe for chocolate muffins.
Looking at the menu on the VBites website, the majority of food is meat replacement; I'm not sure if this is an 'easy' way of making people believe that by going vegan, you can still eat meat-based meals. Personally I use very little meat replacement, and when I do I see it as kind of a treat. Meat replacement can often be fairly expensive. My favourites are:

1. Taifin, Tofu Weiners. In a baguette with ketchup, oh my they are good!
2. Redwoods Rashers. Best part of a fry up, or in a sandwich.
3. Linda McCartney Sausages. Goodbye hangover.
4. Redwoods Chicken Pieces. So versatile and YUM.
5. RealEat Mince. Not often, but Mr T makes the best spaghetti bolognaise in the world.

Maybe I'm just not used to seeing so much meat replacement on the menu. Most vegan/ veggie places rely on good old fashioned veggies, with the guest appearance of some home made bangers.

The real reason that I really want to try this place, is because Mills' mentioned on This Morning that they have a conveyor belt of cupcakes. This sounds amazing!! Like a sushi bar!!

Links:
http://www.vbites.com/
http://www.itv.com/lifestyle/thismorning/features/heathermills321/default.html
http://www.itv.com/lifestyle/food/thismorning/recipes/lemongrasschickenstylewithcoconutrice/default.html
http://www.itv.com/lifestyle/food/thismorning/recipes/veganmuffincupcakes/default.html

Fashion Conscience.

I've spent most of today writing articles for Artichoke, which has made me super happy and inspired! I always planned on having a printed Issue One ready by the end of the summer, and maybe just maybe this will still happen. Whilst writing and researching I came across this fantastic site; Fashion-Conscience.Com.
The company focuses on ethical, fair trade, recycled, sometimes vegan and always beautiful pieces. Some come with a price, but for what you're paying for it's totally worth it. Here are my favourites:

From a collection titled 'Sea Bags', these amazing pieces are created with a nautical theme, and all made from recycled industrial materials. My favourite is this amazing bag made from coffee sacks.

Recycled Coffee Bag, 75 pounds.

There's also a section dedicated to vegan products, which is where I found these beautiful and amazing shoes:

Cherry red 'vinyl' plastic wedge Mary Janes', 50 pounds.

This beautifully pretty dress for what's left of summer please:

Khaki jersey summer dress, on sale for 27.30.

Everything can be found on www.fashion-conscience.com/

Butternut Squash Stew with Couscous.

After a day feeling rather hungover, I needed something nutritious and filling, and this recipe did the trick! Fairly fast to make and you can make huge batches to freeze.

Shopping List

Onion
2 cloves of garlic
Butternut squash
Half aubergine
Parsley *
Coriander *
Ground ginger
Ground cumin
Lemon
350ml stock
Salt and pepper
Spinach
Couscous

* Probably best to use fresh, but I used dry herbs and it was tasty.
Makes enough for two.

1/ Chop the onion in half and then into thick slices. Heat some oil in a deep pan and fry the onions until they soften. Peel and chop the garlic and stir into the onions, and fry until they are golden.
2/ Peel and chop the butternut squash into large chunks. Add to the onions. Cube the aubergine and add to the pan. Pop the lid onto the pan and leave for the veggies to soften, for around 15 minutes. Keep stirring to stop them burning.
3/ Juice the lemon and add a teaspoon (or so) of parsley, coriander, and half a teaspoon of cumin and ginger. Add some pepper and a dash of the stock. Stir well. Pour into the pan, cover and bring to the boil. Season well with salt and leave to simmer for 20 minutes, until the squash breaks easily and there is little water left.
4/ Stir in the spinach (around half a bag) until wilted and serve with warm couscous.

This dish isn't very spicy, so when my tum tum's not feeling quite so dodgy I'd like to add some fresh red chillies or at least some paprika and chilli powder. Would be really nice to serve with some kind of flatbread.

Weekend Round Up.

Well this weekend has been a random mix of lovely food combinations. My boyfriend's Mum got re-married at the weekend, and they made us our own very special cakes, as part of the cake tower:

How cute! Like little top hats. We also enjoyed melon to start, a tomato risotto and a fruit salad. Oh and lots of free alcohol.

Yesterday we found a new and even more local Co-op, so I stuffed myself with doughnuts! And while in town I found this amazing game:

NINJABREAD MAN!! A ninja gingerbread man running around cupcake land. Amazing!

Anywho I'm trying to think of something new (and, most likely, SWEET!) to bake today. Any suggestions? I found a sheet of paper with a recipe for chocolate baklava scribbled on, but maybe I'm feeling a little too lazy for this? We'll see. I hope the sun perks up a bit!

Mildreds.

Oh I am enjoying all these lunches out and trying new places!
This week was a long awaited trip to Mildreds. On the edge of Soho this trendy vegetarian restaurant is bright and fresh; the food is varied and so difficult to choose! A huge specials menu ranging from daily soups, salads and burgers, to desserts and a special lunchtime menu deal.
I literally spent around fifteen minutes poring over the menu, before finally deciding on the burger of the day; butternut squash, onion and cumin. Yum! It was served with the best chips I've ever had, with BASIL MAYO (yes, this was amazing). My boyfriend had ale and mushroom pie, which also came with fries, and a brilliant serving of mushy peas. The perfect consistency, the peas zipped with mint and were refreshing against the dense flavours of the pie. We shared a vanilla and blackcurrant tofu cheesecake which was lovely (no photo, silly me).
Everything's labelled vegan, or vegan option, and the setting and food were all perfect. I would suggest booking in the evening because I can imagine it being packed out, but we enjoyed a very leisurely lunch. Friendly staff, fantastic food and very reasonable price. The drinks list was brilliant, and also fully labelled.
http://www.mildreds.co.uk/
45 Lexington Street, London , W1F 9AN
020 7494 1634

Note: a couple of doors down is Mrs Marengos, which is run by the same lovely people, and offers more of a takeaway option. I've eaten here before and recommend the sizzling stirfry!

http://www.mrsmarengos.co.uk/