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Thursday 26 June 2014

Hebden Bridge and Leeds

I've been working crazy hours recently, however the first weekend in June was The Boy's Birthday weekend and also my first weekend off in what felt like years!

In typical British style, it poured it down, but weren't going to let a bit of water spoil our plans, and we set off to Leeds via Hebden Bridge.

We had quite a lazy morning, so by the time we got to Hebden Bridge, it was around lunchtime, so first stop was lunch.  The town is full of independent shops, and quite a lot of the cafes had vegan options. After wondering around looking at all the options (we were already soaked, so getting more soaked didn't seem like such a big deal) we settled on the Organic House, I had falafel wrap and we shared a side of wedges between us. The falafel came with a salad with various sprouted beans etc, which I had never tried before. I wasn't too blown away by the salad, as I'm not a big salad fan but the falafel wrap itself was delicious, I could have eaten two!



To drink I went for a juice, I think it may have contained orange and carrot judging by the colour of it, but all I saw was that it contained ginger and I was sold- I have a bit of a ginger obsession...



The place also sold vegan cakes, but the only options were an apple slice and banana bread (yawn) so we decided to go to a bakery that had an advertisement outside that said they sold vegan cake. Along the way, we stopped in for a mooch around Valley Organics worker's cooperative and The Boy bought a drink. When we went to pay the lady serving us offered us a free raffle ticket as they were celebrating their first anniversary of the shop opening. I explained we were just visiting for the day so she invited us into the back for free cake and chai tea instead.  Although the place wasn't vegan, they had a apricot and chocolate tofu cheesecake on offer (the chai tea had milk in) which I thought was a really nice thing to do.  Unfortunately, I wasn't too struck on the taste of the cheesecake, I think it may have been the apricot that gave it a strange flavour.  However, I still think the whole experience was the best part of our Hebden Bridge trip- it's not often you walk into a shop and get offered free vegan cake!

Eventually we got to the place we were suppose to be going for cake, a place called Saker Organic Bakery.  It was a pleasant surprise that when we asked which cakes in the cabinet were vegan, to get the reply:

"All of them"



We went for a millionaire's shortbread and some chocolate slab thing, which I assumed was a chocolate brownie.  The millionaire shortbread was lovely, I was never too bothered about millionaires shortbread before going vegan but there is definitely something about wanting something more when you can't have it and I really enjoyed the caramel.  However, the chocolate slab thing was a big let down, it was very dry and bitter.  The Boy has been to Hebden Bridge before, and has brought back other cakes from this place and they have all been lovely, so I think the chocolate slab was a one off.

Next, stop was Leeds, we didn't get any food there as we were planning to go out for tea at a place in Bolton (review to follow) so we just had a wander round the City Centre, and found an shopping arcade with some pretty impressive architecture.



Later on we stumble upon Leed's branch of Las Iguanas and as it was their happy hour we decided to go in for some cocktails- you get 2 for 1 on the same cocktail, so we chose a cocktail each, and had one of each. I went for a dark and storm (rum and ginger ale) and The Boy chose a Pina Colada, which they make with coconut cream instead of dairy cream, making it sfv.  I've never had a Pina Colada before, but it was actually love a first sip- it was like a dessert in a drink form and we both decided to leave the best until last.



We also visited Out of This World, which is Leed's ethical food store, although it isn't a vegan store they sell a lot of vegan friendly stuff as well as stumbling across Little Tokyo, a vegan friendly Japanese restaurant which I really want to go and visit at some point.

All in all this was an amazing trip, which has only strengthened my love of all things Yorkshire :-)

Saturday 7 June 2014

Update

I decided I wanted to write a post, but I didn't know what about, so this is just a update of what I've been up to.

Wagamama
I've not been to Wagamama in years, and we were recently at The Lowry Outlet in Salford and decided to grab some tea after some shopping (I picked up some tiramisu hot chocolate from Whittards- it's not labelled as vegan but if you go on their website you can find which of their products are sfv).  I noticed a Wagamamas, and I had heard that they did vegan options.  You can find a list of their vegan options on their website, it's quite limited but you can ask for them to veganize other things on their menu. I wanted to keep it simple though and just ordered off their list.

For starter I had gyozas, I love gyozas however it's rare that I can find any that are sfv out and about. Being able to order them made me very happy.


For mains I went for yasai itame, which is vegetables and noodles in a coconut soup. This is something I wouldn't usually order, but it was quite nice and I was pleasantly surprised it contained tofu as well.


Pizza Express
I'm a member of a few vegan facebook groups and there has been a lot of excitement about the new vegan options at Pizza Express- the Pianta pizza and the Leggera Panzanella starter. We went recently and I decided to try the Pianta pizza- which comes with rocket, spinach, mushrooms, pine nuts and artichoke on a spicy tomato base. I'm a big fan of putting plenty of toppings on pizza, so this was perfect.


Lidl Finds
We have a Lidl quite close and they have got better at labeling their products that are sfv. On a recent visit, I picked up some new spinach wraps and some cassava crackers which were both labelled vegan friendly.



The wraps were nice enough, they didn't really taste strongly of spinach but had a pretty green hue to them and the cassava are a great substitute for prawn crackers. 

Eating In
I've been extremely busy at work recently, so on some nights the task of making tea falls to The Boy.  When he told me he had made curry containing chickpeas, kidney beans, broccoli, tinned tomatoes, coconut cream and red thai curry paste I was a little dubious. However it tasted amazing, so much so we made the same thing the week after. We added a little cornflour to thicken it up a bit.


Wednesday night in our house= wrap night, and is probably our favorite meal of the week. I usually try to make my own fillings, however as I've been so busy I decided to cheat and buy some Caldron falafels, along with some discounted falafel I found in ASDA. This was the best falafel wrap I've had in ages, I love stuffing it with lots of different sauces.  This one contained falafel (obvs), black olives, salad, hummus, salsa, soya yogurt and sweet chilli sauce!