Here it is, folks. I made a second attempt at the sweet potato brownie and it was a fine attempt. These brownies are gooey, smooth, bursting with sharp raspberries and smattered with lumps of dark,… More
Fighting the French: an egg battle
Bonjour!
I got back from France last night, and just before we left my parents and I popped into a supermarket to get some breakfast for my stepmum, who left for work early this morning. She normally likes her M&S brioche, so she went straight for the brioche section of the supermarket. Being in a rush for the ferry, none of us thought about the ingredients.
Back in England this morning, my pa realised that brioche has eggs in it and that, being French, those eggs aren’t free range (M&S uses free range eggs in all of their products, so I guess it’s something they’ve stopped thinking about).
So, my mission this morning was to write to the company who made the brioche we bought, Pasquier, and ask them why they don’t use free range eggs. I will copy the email I sent them below, and keep you updated on the response.
Please excuse the less-than-polished French 🙂
Cher(e) Monsieur/Madame,
J’étais en France jusqu’à hier, et j’ai acheté un paquet de votre pains au lait. Je n’avais pas le temps de regarder les ingrédients donc je n’ai vu pas jusqu’à maintenant que vous n’utilisez pas les œufs de poules élevées en plein air.
Je suis très malheureuse comme cette, et j’ai jeté le paquet parce que je ne mange pas les œufs de batterie, qui je pense que vous devez utiliser.
Cependant, aujourd’hui j’ai acheté un paquet de brioche de Marks and Spencer, qui était fabriqué en France, et il contient les œufs de poules élevées en plein air.
Donc mon question est cette : pourquoi vous n’utilisez pas les œufs d’origine éthique dans vos produits, quand je sais que c’est possible.
C’est très surprenant de devoir venir en Angleterre d’acheter les produits traditionnels de France qui considèrent les éthiques animaux, puisque ils n’existent pas en France.
Merci de votre compréhension et j’attends pour votre réponse.
Translation:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I was in France until yesterday, and bought a packet of your brioche. I didn’t have time to look at the ingredients so I didn’t see until now that you don’t use free range eggs.
I’m very disappointed about this, and I threw away the packet because I don’t eat battery eggs, which I think you must use.
However, today I bought a packet of brioche from M&S, which was made in France, and it contained free range eggs.
Therefore my question is this: why don’t you use eggs from an ethical source in your products, when it is possible to do so?
It is very surprising to have to come to England to buy traditional French products which take into account animal ethics, since they don’t exist in France.
Thank you for your time and I await your response.
Scrambled tofu and avocado wrap
I went to a veggie cafe a while ago and they were offering vegan scramble as a breakfast option. I love scrambled egg so much so I tried the vegan alternative. I’ll be honest, it didn’t taste like scrambled egg, but it was completely yummy.
So, I decided to recreate it with my own lunchtime twist (basically shoving it in a wrap and adding avocado), but it’s also slightly curried, which was an accidental and yet very excellent decision.
Ingredients (for two people)
- 1 onion
- 350g pack of firm tofu
- lemon juice
- salt & pepper
- curry powder
- 2 wholewheat wraps
- 1/2 avocado
- grated Sheese (or other cheese alternative)
- Sweet chilli sauce
Fry up your onions in some oil and when they’ve gone translucent, chuck in the whole cube of tofu, and smush up with a wooden spoon or spatula until it resembles scrambled eggs. Cook for about 15 minutes, and season to taste with salt, pepper, lemon juice and curry powder (which makes the tofu a nicer colour and adds a really good subtle taste).
Microwave your wraps, chuck on the scrambled tofu mixture, layer with sliced avocado, and grate the Sheese on top. Putting it back in the microwave for a few seconds at this points helps the Sheese melt a bit more (note: I had strong cheddar Sheese and the flavour is seriously strong, so you only need a tiny bit of it!).
Smother in sweet chilli sauce and wrap up.
Pauper’s vegan pesto
Estimated cost: £1.80 for two person meal of pasta and pesto*
Pasta and pesto is my one of my favourite meals. It’s so simple, so quick, and so yummy every single time. You can buy it in a jar, but the vegan version (the same but without parmesan) is actually quite expensive, so I decided to see if I could make some of my own vegan pesto for a reasonable price.
There are two tricks I used to make this recipe cheaper than homemade pesto would usually be. Firstly, I used flaked almonds instead of pine nuts, because you pretty much have to take out a payday loan to afford pine nuts. I learned this trick because I was in a restaurant once and ordered something that purportedly came with pine nuts. When it came out there were no pine nuts in sight, so I asked the waitress if I could have some. She brought me out a pot of flaked almonds, presumably hoping I wouldn’t notice they weren’t actually pine nuts instead of just telling me they didn’t have any, but when I had them with my meal they actually worked really well as an alternative. Since then I have used flaked almonds with pasta-based meals on a regular basis. Secondly, I used frozen spinach to bulk out the basil: you can’t taste the spinach at all but it gives the pesto a nice texture and means you have to use less basil.
I didn’t use a recipe for this pesto, going entirely by taste – I would wholeheartedly recommend this as everyone has different tastes (more salty, less salty, more or less oily, etc), hence this recipe is simply designed to be a guide.
You will need:
28g pack of fresh basil
2 handfuls flaked almonds (I wouldn’t usually suggest buying pre-chopped things as it’s lazy, but these were exactly the same price as normal almonds, and you don’t want the brown skin in your mixture)
A good glug of olive oil (this is a big part of the taste so you need to use the right oil)
2 handfuls frozen spinach, thawed
Lemon juice, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
Method:
Put your pasta on the boil. While this is cooking, chuck all of the basil, almonds and olive oil into a blender and start to blend. Use enough olive oil to bind all of the ingredients together but not enough to make it runny. You’ll know what this looks like if you add the oil gradually. Add the spinach and continue blending, then mix in lemon juice, salt, and pepper to your taste. Drain the pasta and combine with the fresh pesto. The easiest and tastiest thing I’ve ever made!
*Estimated cost breakdown:
- In the interests of openness, this is how I’ve worked out my costing:
- Pasta (Tesco own brand) – 100g @ 75p/kilo = 7.5p (rounded up to 10p)
- Basil (Sainsbury’s) – 80p packet
- Almonds (Sainsbury’s) – £2.20 pack – I think I used about 40p’s worth of this pack
- Olive oil (Aldi) – around £2 for massive bottle – I estimate I used about 20p’s worth
- Lemon juice, salt and pepper – these were in my cupboard already so I’ve attributed 10p to these as they are used sparingly)
- Spinach (Sainsbury’s) – £1 per pack – 2 handfuls @ 20p
Live Below the Line: a reflection on my week
Now that I’ve successfully completed my Live Below the Line challenge, during which I lived on £1 a day for 5 days in order to raise money for Action Against Hunger, and am back onto a normal eating pattern, I thought I’d reflect on what I learned from my week of simulated poverty.
Cheap food is incredibly boring
My meals over the week were repetitive and bland, with basic flavouring staples such as salt being non-existent in my diet. When your meal doesn’t taste of anything, you don’t feel full or satisfied afterwards, and even if you’ve eaten more food than you normally would for a meal you still feel hungry. In this way, it points towards the psychology of our relationship with food: much of the time we aren’t really hungry but feel hungry unless we’ve had the food we want.
Most social activities revolve around food and drink
As it was the last week of term, there were plenty of end-of-term socials going on. I decided not to attend any of them because they were meals out or pub trips. I really didn’t relish the thought of sitting in a restaurant watching everyone around me eat greasy yummy food while I waited to get home for my dinner of plain spaghetti. It has made me realise that if you were really living on £5 a week at university, your ability to enjoy social occasions would be hindered.
I rely on food for comfort, happiness, and to fill time to a dangerous extent
In terms of my general happiness, I found the week really difficult. I realised that I tend to use food as a comfort blanket when I’ve had a rough day or am feeling tired, and equally when I don’t want to do something (like write an essay – eating while staring at a word document with just an essay title on it is less depressing than just staring at the word document and chastising yourself over your lack of focus). I feel that I therefore learned a lot about my relationship to food and that I’d be overall happier if I managed to ensure my happiness didn’t rely on food at all. To an extent I think it’s lazy – there are plenty of things that can make you happy, but choosing chocolate chip cookies is way easier than going for a run or talking to an old friend.
It’s been a long time since I’ve actually felt hungry between meals
For this reason, I think the challenge was really useful. It highlighted how privileged the society that we live in is when the feeling of hunger is so rarely experienced. I think a lot of the feelings of hunger emanated from how horrible the meals were, but I also think that I ate less than I normally would and, without regular snacking, I definitely experienced the sort of deep hunger pangs I wouldn’t normally have unless I’d forgotten to take food or a credit card to uni with me.
People like to try and feed you
The people around me are inherent feeders. People were desperate to buy meals for me, give me their food, etc, on the basis that it wasn’t technically me paying for it. Of course that kind of defeats the object, so I refused, but it’s really sweet that people don’t like seeing your discomfort.
I think there are significant criticisms of the challenge, some being that it doesn’t simulate actual poverty because you’re still living in a centrally-heated house with nice surroundings and taking the bus to uni every day. These criticisms are fair, but I would counter them with the fact that although you aren’t really experiencing ‘living below the line’ you are giving yourself what is actually a very difficult challenge, and raising money for an important charity in the process (I made £159 in 5 days, which I’m so please with). Can that really be bad? Even if I hadn’t raised any money, I still think it was important thing to do, and I’d encourage others to do it, because it highlighted a lot about the privilege that I have and my unhealthy relationship with food.
If you want to know more about the challenge and see how much I raised, or even if you’d still like to donate to the cause, here is the link to my page: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/samhopps
Live Below the Line: a vegan charity challenge
Howdy fellow vegetarians/vegans/blog readers alike!
I am very excited to tell you that I will be taking part in a challenge called ‘Live Below the Line’, from Monday to Friday next week, whereby I will be eating and drinking on £5 (£1 a day), in order to raise money for Action Against Hunger, a humanitarian organisation ‘committed to ending child hunger’ and providing long-term solutions to water and food supplies in communities across 45 countries.
The great thing about this challenge is that it almost necessitates a vegetarian or vegan diet because meat is so expensive, so it really encourages people to try a veggie diet for a while and see how they manage, as well as cutting down on meat consumption and realising that meat is, actually, a massive luxury for us privileged few in the western world.
I have not done any charity fundraising in a while, instead preferring volunteering, so I have set myself a modest target of £100. For those kind people reading this, I would be so so grateful for any donation, no matter how small, to help me reach my target for this wonderful charity.
If you’re interested, the link to make a donation is here: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/samhopps and it’s probably worth donating just to see a student not drink alcohol for a week!!
I’m really looking forward to this challenge and am looking forward to doing my bit for a great charity, and will keep this blog update with my progress throughout the week, including my shopping trip tomorrow!
Vegan Toad in the Hole
Toad in the Hole is my favourite meal in the world, so I wasn’t buying the idea that batter needs eggs to be batter.
After the resounding success of making a batter that consists of only two ingredients (yes, only TWO), I’m wondering if eggs were superfluous all along.
Note: when I had a search on the web for vegan toad in the hole recipes, most of them used an egg replacer, but in my opinion egg replacers are expensive and not using them has never seemed to affect my culinary creations. My advice would be: if a recipe suggest egg replacer, just don’t bother using one and see how it turns out.
So, this recipe is really quick, really simple, and requires a total of five ingredients you probably already have around the house, plus a couple of spices (if you have them), and just salt and pepper if you don’t.
I’ve now made this three times, and the third time I made it for my omnivorous family, as I convinced them through the medium of photography and enthusiasm how amazing the recipe was. I think they enjoyed it, and my only piece of info for meat eaters reading this is: the flavours and textures are a little bit different to traditional toad in the hole, but if you go in and try it without any preconceptions, you’re definitely going to enjoy it.
So without further ado, here is the recipe:
Ingredients
- A handful of chopped mushrooms (enough to fill the base of whatever oven tray you are using – choose the size of your tray based on the number of sausages you’re cooking)
- 1 chopped onion
- 70g Self raising flour
- 120ml Dairy free milk alternative (I’ve tried soya and almond and both have worked really well)
- 4 vegan sausages (Linda McCartney’s plain sausages are vegan – when I went into the supermarket the other day they were selling them for less than half price and I scooped about 12 packets into the trolley in one go – they are really versatile, make great sandwiches, and can be used as meatball alternatives for pasta sauces and stroganoff)
- Rosemary
- Salt & pepper
Method
Heat oven to 220 degrees, gas mark 7.
Chuck the onions, mushrooms and sausages into your baking tray, splash a good amount of oil over them and pop into the oven for about 10-15 minutes, until the oil is really hot.
While it’s cooking whisk the flour and milk together just like you’re making pancake mixture. The mixture should be quite thin and runny, so if it’s a bit gloopy keep adding milk until it’s the consistency of double cream.
Add some salt and pepper and chopped rosemary if you have it (I was given a rosemary plant as a Valentine’s present – way more useful than roses and hopefully shouldn’t die as quickly) to your taste.
When you think the oil is hot enough, pull the tray out the oven, pour the batter mixture over the sausages and veg, and get it back in the oven as quickly as possible.
Cook for about 25 minutes and don’t take it out of the oven during this time or it won’t rise. Check it at this point – I’ve had some trouble with the bottom not being cooked while the top is burning, and I think this might be because my oil wasn’t hot enough. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that even when the top has burnt it’s still completely yummy, so don’t stress too much.
—
The mushrooms and onions are a really nice non-traditional touch to this meal and are like little surprises when you get to the bottom. The meal is good with gravy but also on its own with some fresh veg.
I really recommend trying this recipe out – it’s one of those satisfying vegan AND indulgent meals that people not in the know don’t realise exist.
Creamy sweet potato and pepper korma
I love curries, and I particularly love how experimental you can be with them when, as a vegan, choices are sometimes limited. I usually use tomato as a base when I’m cooking curry, but I decided to be adventurous and try one with no tomato in at all.
As with any curry, start off with your onions and garlic on a medium heat, and fry ’em up until the onions are translucent and soft. Start to build up a spice base with the onions: I usually start with a good sprinkle of cumin and coriander, and add whatever else I fancy while I’m cooking. While they’re frying, start chopping up your other veg. I was using sweet potatoes, green peppers, with some ginger and red chillies (basically just the things I had left in my fridge).
Still completely improvising, I chucked the sweet potato in with the onion, and fried the peppers, chillies and ginger in a separate frying pan. I added a tin of coconut milk to the onion/sweet potato pan, and brought it to a simmer.
When the peppers were soft and cooked through, I added them to the main mixture, and continued simmering. I kept adding water and simmering it down so that there was enough to boil the sweet potato.
At this stage, it was pretty much done. I put some rice on the hob to boil, and kept simmering the mixture and adding more water until it was nice and thick.
I’m actually really proud of this curry, and since I’m a fan of creamy curries it was pretty much perfect. As to everyone else reading this: if you’ve never tried making a curry because you think it’s too complicated (I used to think that, too), it really isn’t. I keep trying different types, and while I’m not perfect, I get better every time, and the finished product is always completely vegan, and so much healthier than the curries you can get in restaurants or as ready meals.
Curry away!
Vegan Chocolate Cake
You heard it here first: a dark, gooey, scrumptious heap of deliciousness that is totally, 100% vegan.
I’ve done a lot of baking, and baked a lot of chocolate cakes, and this dairy and egg free one is honestly the best one I’ve ever made. It makes me wonder why anyone bothers making chocolate cakes with dairy, but hey ho.
I’ve used this recipe twice, and both times it has turned out perfectly (that’s not bragging, I just wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to get right). It’s also so gooey and thick it’s kind of like a brownie/cake hybrid.
For this recipe, you will need:
- 1 1/4 cups flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup cocoa
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tsp white/apple cider vinegar
And for the glaze:
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 4 tbsps butter substitute (I use an olive oil-based margarine)
- 2 tbsps soya milk – I ran out of milk so I had to use soya cream – a crying shame! 😉
- 2 tbsps cocoa powder
- 2 tsps vanilla extract
One day I’ll remember to start taking photos from the beginning of the cooking process, but for now you’ll have to put up with the lack of photographic evidence. Also, I’ve used cup measurements because we have them in the house and they’re so easy, but if you need to use grams or ml or whatevs it’s quite easy to convert this stuff on le google.
So, preheat your beloved, cake-making oven to 177C/350F and grab yerself an 8×8 inch square cake tin.
Chuck the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt straight into the tin and mix it up roughly with a fork.
Then add the water, vanilla extract, vegetable oil and vinegar. Mix it all up good and bake for 30 minutes.
Easy peasy – you don’t even have to wash up a bowl!
While it’s cooking, you can start making the glaze.
Boil the sugar, butter, milk and cocoa together on the hob. Simmer for 2 minutes, remove from the heat, and continue stirring for 5 minutes. Then stir in the vanilla extract (I normally forget this step, but I can’t honestly say my delicate taste buds have noticed).
When the cake has been in for half an hour, take it out of the oven and check it with a skewer. My cakes have usually taken an extra 10 minutes on top of the original cooking time. It’s supposed to be soggy inside but not raw.
Make sure the glaze is warm when the cake comes out of the oven for good and pour it over.
If you can wait, and who are you if you can (?!), leave the cake to cool. Because the glaze is so runny it normally runs to the edges as the cake is not completely flat, but once it’s cut up this isn’t really noticeable.
I’d say have it with a bit of soya cream, but to be honest that would just be a waste of damn. good. cake.
Enjoy!
Why I’m angry about eggs
Fundamentally, I don’t believe in veganism.
*a sharp intake of breath from the crowd as they examine the hypocrisy of a vegan blog spouting such nonsense*
I have no issue whatsoever with humans eating eggs to maintain a healthy, balanced diet, so long as the hens are treated well. The problem is, a lot of chikens are treated well, but a lot aren’t, and were there a way to tell the difference I would eat eggs…
I maintain my standpoint that if I can see happy chickens running around, chilling out, laying some eggs, I’d happily eat those eggs. I’d whip up one hell of portion of scrambled eggs and I would gorge.
So my problem is this: while some, and indeed most, animals are treated well, there are some that are not, and since I don’t know any better, I’d rather not participate in the acceptance of that system.
A while ago, I went to stay with my Dad, and I’d given him my spiel about eating eggs if I knew which chickens they came from and could see for myself that they were properly free range. Before I arrived, he went off to his local farm shop, picked up some eggs, and asked the guy at the till if they could see the chickens from whence they came.
A simple request, one would assume?
No. He could not see the chickens, because they were eggs sourced from elsewhere. Then, he thought, I can take them home and use the stamp on the individual eggs to check where they are from. No. Also not possible.
He decided to file a freedom of information (FOI) request, asking which farm his eggs were from, but this request was declined on the basis of the data protection act.
The data protection act, protecting a business. This is where it gets crazy. In absolutely no way should a straight-up business, selling eggs, be able to hide behind data protection. What have these free-range egg producers got to hide anyway? It’s completely nonsensical that we cannot trace eggs back to the farm where the chickens are being raised. It seems like a crazy thing to have to even file a FOI for, and yet to have it refused…
Something is wrong here.
We assume our food is fine because we work on the basis of ignorance. We are under the illusion that we could find things out about our food if we wanted to, but it’s not true. And the problem is, this way suits everyone involved. The sellers don’t want us to know what’s going on, and the buyers don’t want to know what’s going on. They’d rather turn the other way and pretend the whole food industry is perfectly innocent because people aren’t immoral, right?
So this is why I’m angry about eggs. We should be able to eat them. As far as I’m concerned, in an ideal world, we have a symbiotic relationship with chickens. We look after them, give them regular food, shelter, protect them from predators, and they give us a few eggs in return. Think of it as rent. But I’m not prepared to accept that system when it’s so caught up in the red tape of government that we can’t just see where our bloody eggs are from.
It was never a big request, and yet the barriers that were erected as a result make me deeply concerned about what there is to hide.
Cashew Butter Breakfast Bars
I’m not a fan of breakfast bars. As far as I’m concerned it’s nasty-tasting cereal disguised as a bar of something nice.
It’s cruel and deceiving.
(But I still keep trying them because I never have time for breakfast and think I’ll grow to like them)
So when I came across a recipe in the Waitrose Kitchen magazine for these nutty breakfast bars I thought I’d give them a try. After all, homemade is always better than shop-bought.
The best ingredient of these bars is by far the crunchy cashew butter (made by Meridian, completely vegan, and no palm oil). It’s a really nice twist on classic peanut butter, it has a much more subtle taste and although it says it tastes good on toast, it doesn’t normally get that far for me.
The recipe makes 24 bars, and is really quick to do.
Ingredients:
- 250g oats
- 40g desiccated coconut
- 40g pumpkin seeds
- 40g flaked almonds (I didn’t have any of these so I used ground almonds and this seems to have worked just as well)
- 150g pitted dates (I didn’t have these either so I used apricots)
- 50g soft prunes
- 85g clear honey
- 100g cashew butter
- 1tbsp coconut oil (also not 100% necessary – it’s not exactly a store cupboard essential)
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
ADVICE: Mine came out a bit crumbly, as you can see. I think this is because there wasn’t enough of the wet mixture, so were I to make this recipe again I’d use fewer oats or more honey, butter, water and oil
Set oven to 160C/Gas mark 2. I used a 20cm square cake tin.
Mix oats, coconut, seeds and almonds and spread ’em out ona baking tray. Bake for 20 minutes, shaking them every now and then.
Blitz the dates/prunes/apricots/whatever you choose in a food processor, and then pop them in a saucepan with honey, cashew butter, oil, cinnamon, 3tbsp water and a pinch of salt. Heat and stir until combined, then remove oat mixture from oven and mix it all together.
Shove it all into the tin, smooth the surface and chill until it’s firm. Slice into bars.
I also added a few raspberries and a bit of Alpro single cream, which I can’t even tell isn’t real cream!
Thanks to Waitrose Kitchen magazine for the recipe!
Viaggio Veggie 