Hi again! Sorry it’s taking me so long to post all of this London stuff – I promise I’m almost done now! This post is a bit of a mishmash of different London-related things, so apologies if it’s slightly long.
Anyway, one evening after a long day of walking from place to place all the time, we wanted nothing more than to sit down and enjoy a simple bag of chips, preferably with mushy peas (because I’ve never had those, and they sound fun. they are vegan, right?). However, we couldn’t find a single (fish and) chip shop! Well, we found one in the end, but that one wasn’t open for dinner. I mean, there was plenty of other food, but we really wanted that yummy deep-fried potato-y goodness. Luckily, we finally found a restaurant not far from our B&B that did serve simple, delicious and cheap food, including this generous portion of chips:
These hit the spot. These were really tasty, and the condiments on the side were excellent as well (not pictured, but we got little bowls with three different dips, two of them vegan). Just what we wanted! I also ordered a portion of stuffed vine leaves in tomato salsa, and they were even better than I’d expected. I’ve only ever had dolmades served cold, but these were warm and soft and creamy and utterly delicious.
So while I loved eating at all the amazing vegetarian restaurants in London, this simple meal was very satisfying as well. And we were starting to become kind of broke at this point, so we were happy to have a cheaper meal this time, too.
The next morning (our last day! boo), we made a little trip to an awesome health food store in Ealing. Amy, one of the wonderful people at the B&B, had recommended this place to us, and I’m so glad she did! This store, called As Nature Intended, was packed with awesome vegan goodies. I kind of wish we’d checked it out a few days earlier, because they had loads of products I wanted to try. I still left with a bunch of great treats, though, so I’m definitely not complaining. Here’s a quick list of what we got:
- Sojade soy yoghurts! I’d seen the Sojade brand once before in the Netherlands, but I hadn’t tried any of their products yet. These tiny packages of soy yoghurt were the perfect opportunity to sample some flavours! We had cherry, raspberry, and lemon, and the lemon flavour was definitely our favourite. Mmm.
- A Tofu Spinach Pancake by Laura’s Idea: Unlike other things I’ve bought to eat on the go, I think this product was actually best enjoyed served cold! This was great, as I had no way of heating it anyway. I loved the texture and flavour of the pancake and I liked the tofu spinach mixture too, but I could only eat about half of it before I kind of got bored with the filling. It was also a bit messy to eat. I think I would buy this again as I did enjoy it, but I would probably try to divide it into separate portions and not eat the entire wrap at once.
- A Fresh! sandwich: “organic vegetarian sausage with onion marmelade, cucumber & baby salad leaves on malthouse”. I really wanted to try this because I like discovering new kinds of vegan sausage, and I really enjoyed the sausage and salad on this, but the onion marmalade made the whole sandwich kind of gross for me. I found the sweet flavour way too overpowering, so I tried to eat around it and enjoy the rest of the sandwich, which I did like.
- A Falafel Wrap, also by Fresh!: Definitely not the best falafel I’ve ever had, but it was okay. I put this in the fridge at the B&B so I could enjoy it on our way home the next day, but maybe it would be better eaten right away? In any case, I thought it was a little dry and I didn’t like the bread/wrap very much, but the fillings weren’t too bad.
- Plamil Egg Free Mayonnaise: whoo! I was glad to find a jar of this stuff, as my boyfriend mentioned how much he liked the mayo at Ha Ha Veggie Bar, and I think this is the brand they use. I haven’t opened the jar yet, but I’m looking forward to trying it! Maybe we can do a little mayonnaise tasting to compare different brands…
- A Granose burger mix: These just-add-water burger mixes are always good to have on hand, so I was excited to be able to try a new kind. I already made a few burgers with this, and they’re really tasty! I’ll post more about them later.
- Essence of rosewater and organic vanilla extract: I always see recipes that use rosewater, but I never had the stuff around. Now I do! I haven’t tried it yet, but I should look up some of those recipes. I’m not sure how different the natural vanilla extract is from the Dr Oetker aroma stuff I usually buy, but it will be fun to try it out!
The weather was fiiinally getting a bit better, so we decided to spend our day in Hyde Park. We had a wonderful day! I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures, but I did manage to get a few shots of the adorable squirrels we met – some of them were shy, but we were patient, and eventually they came closer! I had some organic sunflower seeds I’d bought at a health food store and they seemed to love those… I’d never seen a squirrel up close before, so I was super excited! They are so so so cute.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3
