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The Extra in Extraveganza

13/10/2014

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This week the Extra in Extraveganza gives his insights into life with a vegan.

Help! I'm dating a vegan

I have a confession: I am not vegan. But I have something to say, which I think you’ll want to hear, and probably explains why you found your way to Extraveganza.com anyway: I am going out with a vegan.

So how on earth did I end up dating a vegan?

As a child I was raised on a macrobiotic diet which meant that I did not have red meat or dairy products. So perhaps there were buried in my early memories the seeds of a vegan-lover. On one occasion, in my early childhood I asked my mother if she would buy me a frozen fish. She anticipated that it would be for supper (at a time when money was tight), but when the frozen fish arrived home, I placed the fish in a Sainsbury plastic carrier bag filled with hot water and tried to thaw it back to life.

There ensued a rapid lesson on the nature of life and death. I cried and cried as she explained that we needed to eat the fish. I was inconsolable, and in the end my tears won. The fish was buried in the garden, to be eaten by worms but not humans.

So, deep in my psyche, is an empathy with animals. And I am on the road to being a fully-fledged vegetarian. But dating a vegan, particularly in London, is a whole different life experience.

I am aware of all the compromises you vegans have to make to be with us. I know we’re a little less enlightened, and a little less considerate. We know we should be vegan, for so many reasons. We know it’s likely to be one of the key ways to save the planet. We just struggle with having to make so many adjustments in a world that doesn’t cater for vegans. But you tolerate us, because we are making progress. Slow progress.

But have you ever wondered what it's like for us? Is the compromise all in one direction?
I hope I might shed a little light on our own coping mechanisms.


I used to detest people I perceived as fussy eaters. Or at least I thought so. Isn’t food a proxy for many things in life? I am a particular fan of puddings. Gooey, sweet and luscious puddings. I have the sweetest of sweet teeth. If someone doesn’t want their sticky toffee pudding, drenched in caramel and cream, then I start to wonder what’s wrong with them.

It helps that the Vegan is worth making the effort for. Trampling on all those vegan stereotypes. She’s not emaciated. She smiles politely when people say "You don't look like a vegan". She has oodles of energy. She has time in her life for lots of things. She just happens to think that animals should not be harmed or worse, simply to feed her.

She was vegetarian when we first met, so I was eased into a new way of life. The biggest challenge, since her switch to veganism, is undoubtedly going out.

I love to go out. I am a terrible cook, but also don’t have as much time as I would like. I love to socialise with friends and have the freedom to head wherever the night takes me.

Now, as you vegans know, that is simply not possible if you’re vegan. Current estimates are that 1 in 400 people in the United Kingdom is vegan, which means that bars and restaurants are not able (or perhaps not inclined) to cater to vegans. You know this. You get used to ordering a bland side dish of vegetables, grilled just to make sure there’s no contamination. Drinking water, rather than anything more glamorous. Having the fun sapped out of going out. Splitting bills even though you’re subsidising the meat-eaters. After a while, you stop going out. You’re fed up with being marginalised. Being made to feel awkward just because, quite rightly, you didn’t want to have to kill anything so you could have a snack. Tired of paying your fraction of the bill which, bearing in mind your wilted spinach and mushy carrots, is dispropotionate and unjust.

Interestingly, there is not such a problem in the United States. The number of vegans is greater (approximately 1 in 50 according to some estimates) but also there is a greater acceptance of customer foibles and a desire to ensure that the customer is genuinely happy.

Here in Blighty, where the customer is most definitely last, there is a battle simply to get people to understand what vegan is (No, she’s not from another universe! That's Vulcan, not vegan) let alone to cater for a diet free from animal products.

But there are places to go. It’s just finding them that’s the chore. And vegans of course, so used to being unable to find anywhere they can eat or drink, have come to have low expectations of bars and restaurants. But not us non-vegans. So how do we square the circle?

This thorny issue is what caused us to set up Extraveganza.com. A site for vegans and non-vegans alike. Places that anyone wants to go. They just happen to cater for vegans. It’s a slow process, but we’re optimistic and more and more places are considering vegan options. 

In the meantime, the top tips that have smoothed over grumbles at mealtimes, for me (the Extra) and her (the Vegan) are:

(1)  Realising that I am the one who is going to have to compromise, but not do it in a way that makes anyone feel guilty. Words that should roll off the tongue are: “I really feel like falafel tonight”, or “I just fancy somewhere that does a good vegetable curry”, whatever my deep-seated desire for a pizza covered in cheese. If you’re the vegan in the relationship, go along with this ruse, and don’t secretly feel guilty that the food world has to revolve around you. Truth is that it will have to revolve around you in the short term (at least until Extraveganza has persuaded a few thousand more restaurants to cater to vegans and non-vegans alike). But that is not something that should play on any deep-seated Catholic guilt you’re carrying. It’s fine to be the fussy one, particularly when it comes to mealtimes and reducing animal suffering.

(2) Whatever the Vegan says, making sure that there’s a good supply of fruit and nuts  in my rucksack or her handbag every time we head out. I know she doesn’t want to be difficult, and think that we have to pack for her. And being the beautiful optimist that she is, she convinces herself that we’ll have no trouble finding suitable food as we embark on that romantic stroll along the South Bank or head out on a Boris Bike to Shoreditch. But once the sugar low hits, and there are only burgers and milkshakes in food range, then optimism alone cannot overcome the vegan food emergency. Be prepared. If you fail to plan, you plan to ...

(3) Under no circumstances fly on an airline that doesn’t offer vegan meals. It’s all well-and-good forgetting a backpack of almonds and bananas on the ground, but imagine the ordeal when you’re 40,000 feet in the air, and there’s nothing dairy-free. This has happened. You  see, the Vegan will  tell you (it’s part of the “I don’t want to be difficult”) that it doesn’t matter, because she’ll pack food before you travel and it will be fine. But then in the hurry to get to the airport, the rucksack is left on the kitchen table, or it’s impounded at the airport when 100ml of hummus is considered a flight risk, or frankly you under-estimate quite how much food you need to cross the pond.

I’ve got many more tips to survive, but I’ll save those for another time. In a way, it’s a wonder that she’s put up with me. There’s a great statistic about more vegan women tolerating a non-vegan in a relationship than the other way round. I suspect the next article should be how to cope with a non-vegan if you’re vegan. I will leave that to her ...
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Waiting in Deptford

22/7/2014

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Deptford High Street. 

A Poundland. 

A handful of Thai restaurants.

And The Waiting Room. 

A small, unassuming cafe the likes of which you'd find in Hoxton, is, it seems, paving the way for a 'new Deptford'...

It’s named “The Waiting Room”, with perhaps unintended irony, as that's exactly what you'll find yourself doing - waiting. Service is measured and slow. But that's the point. It's as though time stands still in this cute cafe.

And as time slows, you can take in the quirky decor of distressed wood, sarcastic scribbles on the wall and a menu written in fridge magnets. Sarcasm is, so we were told by the wonderful staff, a speciality, to be served daily with your decaf.

Substantial lunch choices of Brick Lane beigels, sandwiches and burgers. And milkshakes to die for. We indulged in the V.L.T. Which is not for the faint-hearted, as our friends at the Waiting Room are not afraid of dishing out generous dollops of their dairy free mayo...

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Anywhere that gives us this many options (vegan, vegetarian, soya, decaf, cupcakes, flapjacks, brownies) can't be bad. And it's almost just as much fun watching the array of customers who congregate here.

Spotted: a chatty man waiting for his double shot espresso who systematically asked everyone in the queue how their day was (maybe the extra caffeine is a bad idea?) and a glamorous goth with her vegan lap dog (yes, really!)

Go, sit, wait, eat, enjoy.

PS While you're there, get yourself snapped with the Chippendale look-alikes!


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A date with Ms Cupcake

15/7/2014

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There are not many things that will get us up before 11am on a Sunday morning, when we should be having a well-earned lie-in, catching up on repeats of Come Dine With Me or putting on Netflix for a Suits-athon. But this Sunday morning was special. So special in fact that, in another part of the country, Mike had earlier pulled himself off Canal Street at 4am, showered, slept briefly, and jumped on the 7am train from Manchester. It made our 30-minute trundle on a worse-for-wear Northern Line train pale into insignificance.
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What could have us disrupting our weekend routines? Simple. A date with Melissa. She rocked up (literally rocking, in her 1950s attire) in her bunch skirt, polka dot headscarf and bright red lipstick, flanked by her tattooed and blacknailed sidekick Phoebe. Who were these mysterious women?

We were of course in the presence of the fabulous Ms Cupcake, and her general manager, and, while we could be forgiven for thinking we were to be extras on the remake of Grease III The Old Street Years, were in fact in the hallowed halls of the Central London Cookery School, about to start Ms Cupcake’s day-long vegan baking class.

Of course, you exclaim. That’s why we left the house so early. Very few things get between a sweet-toothed vegan and her treats.

Let’s face it: it is not beyond the realms of possibility for  6 chocolate and vanilla-iced cupcakes, 4 giant caramel sugar biscuits and an entire 9" double layer Victoria sponge cake to be devoured in under 24 hours by a cake-starved vegan.

As beginners to the vegan baking scene, we were slightly nervous about attending Ms Cupcake's full-day vegan baking class. Followers of our twitter feed (@ukextraveganza) may recall the coconut scone disaster, and previous attempts at vegan baking have often involved recipes that required a minimum of 25 exotic ingredients, half of which we could not pronounce and half of which were not available in Waitrose or Planet Organic!

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However, after our day with Ms Cupcake, we were changed beings. Our experience showed us that vegan baking can be simple, fast, extremely delicious and even more fun than 'normal' baking (probably due to the fact that Melissa and Phoebe are amazing and there was so much edible glitter everywhere we felt that a unicorn might appear at any moment). If we had a criticism, it was that even we, lovers of indulgence, were surprised at quite how much sugar and fat went into a cupcake. However, so long as you don’t live on cake alone, you’re allowed the occasional blow-out.

We kicked off our day meeting the other vegan baking enthusiasts. A full array including a Slovenian vegan (a Slovegan!?), a vegetarian from Manchester (a Manchetarian?!), an owner of a London vegan restaurant, and a bakery-owning mother with a son with an egg allergy!  

Melissa and Phoebe demonstrated, step-by-step, each of three recipes (cupcakes, sponge and cookies) that we were to learn on the day, and also threw in some top tips on perfecting vegan baking, and some product substitutes that we could use to adapt the recipes to fit our free-from diet.

Our favourites tips of the day: (a) when you need tea and biscuits, go for Jammie Dodgers and Bourbon Creams (both APF)! (b) as an egg substitute, you can use apple cider vinegar to curdle soy milk (eww!) as well as mashed banana and fruit juice (c) when you’ve messed up on your icing creation (pretty likely, we think), take a handful of chopped nuts and roll your creation in those: voila, a nutty surprise that looks like you planned it that way!

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Oh, and next time you pass Carluccio’s and automatically start salivating at their meringues as big as your head, buy some Orgran’s No Egg (http://www.orgran.com/products/174/) and get whipping and folding. It works just as well and makes gluten-free vegan meringues to rival old Antonio’s! These girls really know it all when it comes to free-from!

What really surprised our cold London hearts was how willing Melissa was, and is, to offer business advice and support to blossoming bakers and entrepreneurs. Ms Cupcake's mission is to spread veganism, and so for her, the more the merrier.

And being schooled by such cool-looking chicks who looked more like they belonged to a rock or punk band than arguably the most successful vegan bakery in London confirmed what we knew: sexy, cool veganism is on the rise. And it’s much easier than it looks. Like we say: free from, it’s simple!"

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It's good to be Free!

9/7/2014

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We recently hightailed it (well, in so far as you can 'hightail' it in London, meaning we battled the crowds on two tubes and an overground train!) to Olympia for this year's Allergy and Free From Show. Thanks we should say to those kind folks at the Vegan Society and VDelicious

What a great show it was. There are some amazing options out there - milks, magazines, marshmallows and much in between, from a new generation of merchants who are innovative and more in-tune with the demands of the modern vegan. A quick survey among returning exhibitors confirmed what our instincts told us as we surveyed the queues at each stand: numbers of visitors were definitely up on last year. So, extraveganzans, we are slowly growing in numbers and strength...

This show was a great treat for both of us - options and alternatives that are Extra and Vegan friendly, and a testament to the exciting, new things happening in the UK.

Now for
our top picks of the show ...
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Good Health Box (www.goodhealthbox.com)

We are so glad this trend has come to the UK. Make your own box of treats or opt for an in-house creation, with a rolling subscription or buy-as-you-go. What set this company apart from competitors are the larger goody boxes you get (= more treats) and a range of products that we genuinely have never seen before in shops (and you know we’ve seen a lot!) If you find yourself always resorting to syrupy snacks at your desk, then just order in the Vegan Box, or for your dairy-allergic child there’s the Youth Box too.

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Part-time Carnivore ( http://www.parttimecarnivore.org )

Extra loved this non-profit and found a kindred spirit in Pete, co-Founder of Part-Time Carnivore. This movement starts with an online pledge to have meatless days in your week, and connects you with other Part-Time Carnivore teams. You can create your own group, or join with others, all around the world. Currently, there are 2656 members who have pledged in 37 teams worldwide, making efforts to reduce meat consumption not only better for the environment, but also a friendly competition. It’s a fun accessible website that you should shove in the face of all your meat-eating non-vegan-believers!

Mozzarisella on Venice Bakery pizza base ( www.venicebakery.co.uk )

Now we think pizza is just about the hardest AFP food item to get right. Where is the cheese that doesn’t taste like styrofoam? And we often crave a hot slice of margherita pizza, dripping in cheese. So when we stumbled on this stall, with not only that but also a base that is gluten free too, well, let’s just say there weren’t many samples left when we finally walked away from the table! We love these people, and the only problem we see is the pounds we'll be putting on. All the team were super-friendly and passionate about their product so it was a nice place to hide when the crowds got to us. Didn’t hurt that their product was quite so fantastic.
Trina’s Delicacies ( trinasdelicacies.com )

There's a new baker on the block! Fun and sweet, and that’s just Trina! Her cupcakes and cakes (including gluten-free options) are made-to-order in her kitchen in Brixton (you can track her and her cakes down every Saturday morning in Brixton market). These cakes have lots of delicate flavours and delicious jam-filled centres. Totally yummy for your tummy. We still love you Ms Cupcake, but wow is there some Brixton competition!
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Amy's Kitchen ( www.amyskitchen.co.uk )

Thank you for cooking, Amy! And thank you for now selling your products in the UK (available online, or in Wholefoods, Planet Organic and Tesco from September)!

Ready meals for a lazy night in: get in your pjs and scoff down our favourite, Chinese noodles & veggies in a creamy cashew sauce. Although, don't think that the others weren't a close second. These ready meals have all the naughty comfort food feeling you want, and they're vegan. We're sure you'll be popping down to Planet Organic to try the vegan burger and Spanish stew. 

Since our mantra is 'Free from. It's simple.' We really enjoyed the opportunity to meet and eat with people who want the same thing for themselves and their lives.

We're in danger of sounding like He-Man at the end of a cartoon, but Extra and Vegan passionately think that any opportunity for APF people to hang out and share ideas is a good thing. Sharing really is caring! So, let us know what you’re favourites were, and we'll be back next year...maybe with our very own stand!  Oh, and while you’re here, and thinking along these lines, we came across this clever video by Steve Cutts. Have a watch!.It’s worth it, even for the Extra. It’s probably everything a vegan has thought about humanity and the environment in one 3-minute video!

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Sweet Sunday

17/6/2014

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Sunday is a day for decadence, and what better way to be decadent than indulging your sweet tooth. Off we went to Manna in Primrose Hill with the sole intention of eating as many sweet things on the menu as we could find.

Manna is an interesting place: like the other small chic restaurants in Primrose Hill, you know it's going to be elegant and a treat. And chic at a price. Go with your parents or a rich aunt, so that you can overlook the £8 pricetag for desserts.

Having ordered the top half of the dessert menu, we settled in for a lazy graze. The table behind us noisily complained that they wanted more light, so we were left in our own little backwater (note to visitors to Manna - if you want light, ensure you are not seated in the rear alcove where you will have wood and William Morris-esque floral wall prints for company) to savour the flavours.

Whereas the usual complaint at vegan restaurants is that the main dishes are acceptable, but the desserts are the nadir, at Manna the converse is true. Mains can be slightly too earthy and 1970s in their presentation, but the desserts were tip-top, in the Gate restaurant league.
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The semifreddo was perfect for that summer's day - the cold and soft of the creamy vanilla ice-cream with the hard chocolate biscuit chunks. We could have eaten another three right then and there.

The raw mojito tart is creamy, indulgent and feels like snuggling into your warm comfy clean bed after a hard day.

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Of the four that we tried, the sticky toffee pudding was the most disappointing. The sponge was dry, and suffered from the disease of all vegan cake, namely a lack of plump fluffiness. It was dense and no amount of coconut ice cream (which was, we admit, pretty scrumptious) could compensate for the dry and dense sponge.

Our final assault on the senses was a cheesecake. It had a slightly familiar, soy vegan aftertaste but it had a delicious texture and was topped with a berry compote. 8 out 10 from us.

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No doubt egged on by the delicious puddings (three out of four ain't bad), we rounded the meal off with a takeaway portion of petits four. They are advertised on the menu as being available for sale, so we were a little surprised to get them packaged in a disposable burger carton.

The contents were, sadly, as bland and disappointing as their packaging. The small biscuits were brittle and under-sugared, having a texture of french toast and a taste somewhere between rusk and Rich Tea.

Among the dessicated cargo of biscuits were four delicious coconut truffles, but by that stage we were wallowing in despair at the toothcracker biscuits. Guess that will teach us for being greedy!

In spite of our mild gripes, this is a definite favourite for pudding. It's a shame they don't have afternoon tea, as the puddings eclipse the main courses. Get there when that sugar and cream craving needs a good beating.



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