So, You Want to Travel?

This post is to maybe calm some nerves about how to travel as a vegan. Everything from day trips out, to flying across the world, can cause some issues when you live on a vegan diet. However, I survived this summer, and it's surprisingly easy.

My first stop was Rome. My best mate and I jumped on a plane after finishing our A-Levels and had the best few days away. I, sadly, cannot speak any other language apart from English, and was very fortunate that the vast majority of people we came across spoke English fluently, so I could simply explain that I was a vegan to them. I expected to live off tomato pasta for the duration, however I was a bit taken aback to find that the Romans freshly make their pasta and use it making milk. Bugger, I thought to myself, time for plan B. After a quick google, my friend found a vegan restaurant within walking distance of our hostel and we ate there twice during out stay - once for dinner after finding out about the pasta situation, and once for breakfast on our last day. It was absolutely incredible, a bit pricy, but a girls got to eat! My non-vegan friend enjoyed the food too, and the staff were lovely too - the restaurant was called 'Ops' and was seriously incredible - definitely worth a google maps if you ever find yourself in Rome

After a few days back home, another mate and I embarked on a two week volunteering adventure in Bangkok, Thailand. The airline we used (Thai Airways) was really good, and provided two vegan meals (but also supplied a croissant and some butter, which I left, just in case!). But apart from that, the food was good and filled me up for the 12 hour flight.
The volunteer house we stayed in 'provided breakfast' which was, to say the least, a bit of false advertising! each day, the 10 of us sharing got a loaf of bread (the slices were tiny, about half the size of what we get over here!), some cereal, milk and orange juice. I took my own tiny jar of peanut butter, as I knew you couldn't buy it over there easily, and also took 10 holland and barrat strawberry jam flapjacks (which i now can't eat as I got so bored of them!).
The good thing about Thailand, is that they don't cook with dairy products, and soya milk was readily available - but careful, they fortify it with regular cows milk to improve the taste! Be sure to check the package, but the 7/11's on every street corner (literally) sell straight up soya milk. oh, be warned, its grey and doesn't taste as nice as the Alpro I'm acclimatised to! Most dinners were a bowl of cereal with soya milk.
Lunches at the school were my saviour. I explained to the school team that I was vegan, and it wasn't an issue, they made me really lovely rice and vegetables every day and it was lovely.
Me and my friend came across a vegan restaurant in Bangkok, called "May Veggie Home" which was a 30 second walk from the nearest sky train station - Asoke. I had a burger followed by chocolate ice cream, which remains to this day, the nicest (and cheapest) vegan food I've ever eaten. We ate their twice and I couldn't recommend it enough.

My final stop was Paris and I ate a lot of french bread! Again, because the Parisians speak English so well, I did not encounter any problems in the normal resturants we visited, and we stumbled upon a vegan resturant completely by chance when wondering through the Latin Quarter. It was called the 'Le Grenier De Notre Dame and it was good! A little pricy (but what isn't in Paris) and a real good find - worth a trip if you find yourself in the area. 

So there you go, I spent a good deal of time away this summer and survived! Where have you been traveling to? How did you get by on a vegan diet? I'd love to know!

Remember Me?

Hello Stranger, long time no see?!

Things have been a little hectic for the last few months - I had an incredible summer 2015, traveling to Bangkok, Rome and Paris, then working every hour of the day to revive my bank balance in time for uni (which wasn't as successful as I had hoped it would be). Since then, I've survived my first term at university as a Law student and put on a considerable amount of weight (whoops). I've also started to row again, which is amazing and I'm loving every second, despite the early starts every weekend, and feeling like your chest is about to explode about three times a week (the other sessions aren't quite as physically demanding).
On the eve of my second term, I thought I'd check in and have a little chat about what I want to achieve food wise this term. So far, I've cooked a meal from scratch twice, existing mainly on peanut butter on toast, chips and coffee. Oh, and quite a lot of alcohol.

This term, my main aim is to manage my time better. I fell into the trap of not getting up until I had to (hardly ever before 10am), napping whenever I wanted and staying up until 4am finishing tutorial prep. It may be a 'typical' uni student lifestyle, but I simply hate feeling like I'm never on top of things and constantly chasing my deadlines. If I can crack this one goal over the next 10 weeks, I'll have accomplished something, and stop me snacking constantly instead of making proper food for myself.

I've never been one to skip breakfast, but I always try and skip lunch, which is quite frankly a dumb move all round. I'm hungriest between 11am and 4pm, so will aim to eat more in these hours, to stop me eating bad foods at dinner, and 11pm bowls of cereal with my flat mates.

My third and final goal is to cut down the amount of coffee I buy. I often use a Starbucks soya latte as meal replacement, and quite frankly, it's expensive. Not to mention the fact that Starbucks don't pay their tax bill... My dad's donated his coffee machine to me, and I will invest in a travel mug to take it to my lectures in!

I think that's quite enough of a challenge to set myself food-wise for the next 10 weeks. I've been bored out of my mind for the last few weeks, itching to be busy again - wish me luck!

Vegan Chocolate Cake

This post is inspired by the fact I just failed by driving test (boo) and am looking to eat my feelings of frustration to a very rude driver who decided, as I was coming along the road, to pull out from behind parked cars (on her side of the road) and cause me to fail (apparently, for not anticipating this nutcase was going to engage in this act of stupidity). Anyway, I digress.

I've tried this recipe many times, and have tweaked it to, in my opinion at least, perfection. My non-vegan family love these almost as much as I do, though today, I intend to eat the whole batch in one sitting, while watching Jeremy Kyle re-runs... (sixth form can, quite frankly, do one today)

Ingredients:
200g Self-Raising Flour
200g Caster Sugar
4 Tablespoons Cocoa Powder
5 Tablespoons Oil ( - vegetable or olive)
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Tablespoon Coffee Granules (dissolved in a tiny bit of hot water)
250ml Water

1. Preheat oven to 180, line a cake tin (I use a square one) with baking paper. The way I do this is by running the paper under water and scrunching it up into a ball. This way, when you flatten it out into the tin, it fits better into it.
2. Quite simply, mix everything together until smooth.
3. Bake for about 40 minutes - leave it slightly longer if you want a traditional cake, about 40 minutes leaves it very moist, which I prefer.
4. Leave to cool before cutting into squares.

On a side note, it is very easy to make vegan butter cream - simply mixing soya butter with double the amount of icing sugar, and adding melted dark chocolate or cocoa powder to make it chocolate flavoured. Whack some of that on top of the cake, and you'll be winning.

What is your go-to vegan chocolate cake recipe? I'd love to know!

Ew, You're a Vegan?!

Todays post is inspired by the most common, annoying and frustrating I get when people find out I'm a vegan.
I never usually volunteer this information - after all, what relevance is it to people? Although I never attempt to hide it, I do find it a bit awkward, and invariably get the same responses - (ew, why?! really??)
I class myself as an 'accidental' vegan - that being that I never set out with the aim to cut out meat and animal products from my diet. I turned vegetarian as a challenge for myself 3 years ago, to see if I could go without it. Since then, I haven't missed it, so never thought about re-introducing it back into my diet. The Vegan thing happened a few months ago, when I discovered I had a dairy intolerance (see my post on the elimination diet).
Since then, naturally people that know me have been naturally curious and inquisitive about my 'choice' to be a vegan. I don't want to get into the various ethical issues surrounding veganism, but I find the responses i get completely baffling and wanted to share them with you.
1) "omg, why are you a vegan? why? just why? don't you want some meat? here, have some meat, go on, I dare you" to which my response is usually just a look that I like to think conveys my thoughts and feelings towards this particular league of individual...
2) "oh, so you're allergic to gluten then" - not quite, no.
3)"are you really?! wow, I couldn't give up chocolate/bacon/chicken/cake" - I don't mind this one at all, and it is by far the most common. I understand that it's a novelty to some people, and quite an odd thing to do if you didn't have to do it
4) *after explaining choosing not to eat meat and being intolerant to dairy* "oh, so you're not a proper vegan then" no, I'm just a pretend one? Of course I'm a proper vegan you tool!
5) "what's a vegan?" *cue 5 people jumping in with definitions of lacto-vegetarians, coliacs, fruitarians, raw-diet, pescatarians, and eventually, I might manage to offer up the proper definition

Although now I'm sitting and laughing at these scenarios as I replay them in my head, I do find myself at times being quite wound up by it. I don't understand what impact my diet has on other people - I've had people repeatedly try and talk me out of it, when actually, I have never once tried to talk anyone into it. My views on what I can and can't eat are mine, and not subject to anyone else's opinions.

What are people's reactions like when they find out you're vegan? What to do you say when people tell you they're vegan? I'd love to know!

Vegan's Guide to Surviving a Festival

So I braved Reading Festival last weekend, and am pleased to report that I survived!
I was a little nervous about going, not least because of the alarming thought of drinking for 4 days with very little food. However, it was a great weekend, and I didn't struggle on the food front at all - here's how I survived....

1) Holland and Barrat Strawberry Jam Flapjacks - these little beauties were perfect! One of these in the morning was just what I needed. High in calories and sugar, and it doesn't matter if (like me) you packed them at the bottom of your rucksack, as they taste just the same squashed!
2) Chips - Buying hot food at a festival is daylight robbery (don't even get me started on the price of a 500ml bottle of water - £2.20?!?). However, by saturday, I bit the bullet and indulged in chunky chips. £3 for a fairly large portion, and they certainly hit the spot.
3) Pringles - these genius inventions are mostly vegan (all but cheese and onion, for obvious reasons). Brilliant because the can doesn't get squashed, and, once you've eaten the whole can in one go, at 4am, after throwing some shapes at the silent disco for the last 3 hours, use the can as a music speaker...
4) Berroca - for recovering from said silent disco
5) Water bottles - don't do what some of our friends did, and buy £8 worth of water from tescos, and realise you can't carry said water for the approximately 32 mile trek (I jest, but nothing prepares you for the walk)... and have to ditch the water, thus arriving at your camp site without any water, or more importantly, any water containers. Don't try and carry water there! Just take empty water bottles, so you can fill them up at the numerous water points at the festival.
6) Alcohol - no explanation needed
7) Tinned Spaghetti - not my suggestion, but my friend brought tins of food to eat cold. Personally, I could never stomach cold spaghetti hoops/beans, but if you can a) well done and b) do it. Obviously, make sure the cans have ring-pulls and take some cutlery (or even better, plastic forks)
8) Pot Noodle - Some of them are vegan (the sweet and sour one is my favourite), and you can buy boiling water there (I believe its 30p)

That's how I survived Reading festival - have you been to a festival? I'd love to know how you survived!

The Elimination Diet

After struggling with crippling migraines 2-3 times a week for 2 years, and visiting the doctors numerous times after each new prescribed pill stopped working for me, I decided to start looking for the cause of my migraines, instead of treating them. I sort of knew they were food related, as I only ever got migraines after eating certain foods - for a long while I thought it was chocolate (I was kind of right!)
My doctor mentioned to me the elimination diet (also known as the exclusion diet), really not believing that I would complete it. However, by Christmas 2013-2014, I was desperate.
The elimination diet is, untimely, what it says on the tin. You live on a incredibly restricted diet for 3 weeks (honestly the longest and most miserable 21 days of your life), avoiding all manner of food commonly thought to cause food allergies/intolerances/sensitivities. The basic idea is that, when your body is constantly subjected to a food, it learns how to deal with it, even if it does not like it - and gives us very subtle but manageable symptoms to tell us it does not like the food, that we ignore (migraine, stomach ache, bloating, feeling sluggish...)However, when this food is removed for a considerable length of time, the reaction your body will have when it is re-introduced will be more noticeable and severe. Furthermore, it is a amazing way to discover how your body responds to different food groups (for example, dairy gives me migraines and wheat breaks me out).
 This wipes out pretty much every food you've ever eaten! As a vegetarian at the time, I obviously could not eat the meat, further limiting my food options.
For 3 weeks, I ate fresh fruit and vegetables, and the odd tea spoon of rice. and that was it. I cried every day for a week because I was so hungry, and laid awake at night with hunger pangs (so now when I hear Tinie Tempah rap "have you ever been so hungry it keeps you awake?" "Yes I bloody have".
I made the also slightly idiotic decision of undertaking the elimination diet over christmas - my christmas dinner was fruit 'salad' (banana, apples and grapes).
After your 3 weeks of fasting, you are then meant to reintroduce one food at a time back into your diet, leaving a gap of 3 days. Allow me to explain. On the monday, you could introduce brown bread, then go back to your elimination diet for tuesday and wednesday. If no abnormal reaction occurred, you could then re-introduce another food on thursday ect... However, you must be extremely careful about which foods you introduce, as they must be only be 1 food group/type re-introduced at a time. For example, you could not suddenly eat a pizza, because if an abnormal reaction occurred, you would not know whether it was the wheat in the dough, the tomatoes (yeah, these were banned too!) or the cheese...
I was very lucky to discover very quickly afterwards that dairy products were the culprit for me, causing severe migraines I re-introduced bread first (and ate an entire mini loaf in one day), then cheese 3 days afterwards (I just wanted a cheese toastie, to be honest with you!)
The elimination diet is undoubtedly one of the most challenging things i've ever done, and it took me 4 months to have a normal relationship with food again. I tried at first only eating small amounts of dairy, and pre-empting migraines with prescribed tablets, but after 6 months, it was easier to cut it out all together and become fully vegan.
If you're considering doing the elimination diet, I cannot recommend it enough, as you will learn so much about your body, and learn how you really can survive on such a small amount of food (2000 calories a day is far too much, in my opinion!). You will completely change your attitude towards food, and probably for the first time in your life appreciate real hunger, which is an eye-opening experience.
Here are some tips to consider before you start:

• PLAN! Find a plan you want to follow and stick to it religiously. . Find some recipes that are compatible (I never bothered and regretted it), and make them up in big batches, so you always have food to hand. I don't think there is a need to be as hungry as I was for the 3 weeks.
• Keep busy - try not to sit around the house all day, or be with people that are eating normal food. When people ask why you're not eating and you explain this to them, they will literally try and force feed you. You don't need this sort of temptation!
• Have something to chew - it may sound gross, but the chewing sensation makes you less hungry. I used to sterilise bobby pins and carry them round in my pockets to chew when i was at school. It really does work! 
• Know your limits - You have to be sensible and most importantly safe if you do this short diet plan. 3 weeks is a maximum, any more than that is completely unhealthy. It is not, nor is it meant to be a sustainable, permanent diet, and should not be treated like one. If, after 2 weeks you can't go on, eat something! You may just have to be more vigilant of your bodies reactions. The amount of time you spend fasting is also dependant on your age and body weight. Children under 10 should fast for about 10 days, whereas healthy adults can do it up to 3 weeks. It is your body and your choice, only you will know!

Good luck!

Have you done the elimination diet? What was your experience with it?

Accidentally Vegan Food

There is actually a surprising amount of food that is "accidentally vegan" - i.e. foods made without the vegan market in mind, but, by happy mistake, we can eat (horray!).

Of course, there is the dairy free chocolate (I'm yet to find one that convinces me), and dairy free fudge (again, not particularly delicious), but once in a while, usually whilst strolling through the supermarket, lazily scanning the frankly alarmingly long list of ingredients on the backs of packets, you stumble across a real gem - here are the first few I've discovered! 

1. Jammy Dodgers - I was AMAZED to discover these were vegan, and promptly threw three packets into mum's trolley.  They just taste so good! They don't contain any milk, butter or eggs (which, on closer consideration may be slightly alarming - these 3 crucial ingredients make biscuits after all?!) But who the hell cares? Every so often I throw caution to the wind and treat myself to a biccy or 5

2. Co-Op Bourbon biscuits - A slightly controversial find, as these may contain milk, but I often find this is just companies covering their arses in the unlikely event of someone keeling over from eating something they may be allergic to (much like every single product you find saying "may contain nuts"). Anyway, perfect dipped in coffee (decaff with soya milk, of course), and a chocolate fix for my inner fatty!

3. Coco Powder - Slightly odd and random, but a surprise none the less. This especially handy when it comes to baking.

4. Peanut Butter - Probably obviously vegan to the vast majority of people, I was shocked to find out this was vegan (I idiotically assumed it contained butter!). It brightens up dry, boring toast, and gives me energy and those extra calories! Ironically enough, I've spent years trying to reign in my calorie intake, but these past few months I've been trying get a few more calories into myself. The thing about most vegan food, is that it is boring to eat, therefore, you don't eat a lot of it, so naturally, you loose a few pounds. But sometimes you notice that you're running out of energy. Peanut butter is high in calories and the "good" kind of fat (if such a thing exists - I am truly skeptical).
5. Starbucks - most of the starbucks menu can be made suitable for vegans. Typically, I ask for soya milk and no cream. As long as you avoid a handful of drinks that contain milk powder (for example, Pumpkin Spice Latte) and the caramel sauce, you're good to go!

What accidentally vega food have you come across? I'd love to know!