Veggie recipes, reviews, and more…
So, as you know by now, we’ve just spent a week in the Loire region of France. A full write up of our non-burger exploits will be coming soon (edit: here), but for now, I wanted to introduce you to a great little burger place we found in Angers. This historic town has a bustling centre full of shops, bakeries, patisseries, and restaurants, including one called VF. This is in fact one of a pair, with the other to be found in Nantes.
We’ve just spent a week in gloriously sunny France, and of course kept a bit of a food diary while we were there! I managed to track down a total of five different veggie burgers (probably a record for a 7 day holiday!), and while J returns home to work, I’m now spending another week in another part of France. Sounds harsh, but I’m here to celebrate my birthday with my family… and I’m working every day!
You probably know by now that I unashamedly LOVE Wetherspoons. I’m the first to admit that in some towns you will find undercooked or burnt food, rude waitresses, and half the menu not available. But when you find the right Spoons, you will find a menu full of fantastic and great tasting veggie options, all at a brilliantly low price. After putting the Mexican and veggie burgers at the top of my top ten list, you can imagine my excitement when I read their latest new menu… featuring the all-new Texan burger.
We recently decided to recreate a dish we really enjoy – katsu curry. It’s one of our favourites when we go to Wagamama, so this was definitely something we wanted to be able to make at home too. It’s a reasonably simple meal, but almost deceptively so, as we found out when we tried it ourselves. The Vine is below, followed by the recipe we followed – adapted from the BBC Good Food vegetarian magazine.
I recently took part in the Blogger’s Fashion Week day, which was held at OXO2 and featured some amazing brands and opportunities. I will be adding some food-specific reviews from some of those brands later on, but for now I wanted to feature the day itself. We were greeted by a plethora of opportunities to interact with brands – racks of beautiful clothes and lingerie, free manicures and beauty sessions, food and drink to try, non alcoholic cocktails, and a ton of samples to help us get to know the products.
We’re on to our third and final Hello Fresh week, featuring the meals we had in our free starter box. If you’re looking to try it yourself and get a discount, there’s some money off lurking in that link! Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the last meal, what it was like, and whether we liked it or not. This was the Too Tasty beetroot and lentil salad, and I have to say it’s not something I would have tried myself. I hate walnuts and salad is never a word that makes me feel hungry – I’d rather have a wrap and pretend it’s a full-blown meal rather than a salad in disguise, but we followed the recipe and we had a big surprise.
Our second Hello Fresh meal was rigatoni with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella, which was surely going to be an interesting one. For starters, we never eat pasta unless it’s in a sauce, and we also usually go for a healthy version rather than just the normal “white” pasta. Secondly, we never eat white onions, always red. And thirdly, I don’t like olives. Basically, this recipe had a lot of work to do to win us over!
They certainly don’t look like much on the packaging, and I would not have thought to try them at home. Like many of the newer Quorn products, they seem to be suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. They just remind me of the bland and stodgy Quorn I used to eat, and which I have vowed to avoid as much as possible. Who would have guessed that there would be something worth eating hiding away inside?
