Green Rocket

'Green Rocket' is the newest vegetarian restaurant to make its way to Bath situated right in the centre, described by the owners as being a vegan restaurant with vegetarian options. I've been fortunate to go there a few times since its opening a year or so ago and wanted to share some pictures I've taken on my various trips. The food there is simply sublime and I know if I lived in Bath I'd find myself in there every other day, so if you happen to be passing near be sure to pop in. I feel in this instance a picture definitely speaks a thousand words so with that said... enjoy!

''The Ambience''

''Brunch/Lunch''

''Sweet Treats''

''Dinner''

much love, bean xx

Homemade Vegan Pesto Recipe

Today I want to talk about a delicious and quick homemade vegan pesto that I made yesterday for my lunchbox. The recipe that I based it on was from a cookery book called 'let them eat vegan' written by a lady called Dreena Burton, it's clearly laid out and all the recipes are well explained meaning that even atrocious cooks such as myself can use it. I like my pesto to be relatively strong which is why I didn't use any of the water that it recommended but instead I used black olives, pine-nuts and nutritional yeast (which contained B12) to bulk it out and produce lots of mouth watering flavours. 

The ingredients are in the picture above (excluding the nutritional yeast and pine-nuts) and it was literally a case of putting them all together and wizzing them in a food processor until I was pleased with the consistency, as I said it's literally a fool proof recipe. I added the olives and pine-nuts into the food processor after everything else so that they didn't lose all of their texture. Then I just stirred in a bit of nutritional yeast and boom, finito!

The pasta I used took about 12 minutes to cook and once I drained that I stirred the amount of pesto I wanted and then cling-filmed the rest for the next day as it easily makes a couple of decent sized portions. It's a perfect and simple recipe for when you are in a rush and the great thing is that you can easily experiment and add different elements to the dish to make it your own. I hope you found this useful and be sure to let me know if you give it a try!


love, bean xx

Did somebody say Cake?

Audrey Hepburn once said, ‘Lets face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me.’ Now if you were to extract the word ‘creamy’ and replace it with ‘vegan’ then I’d say she was just about right. Now cake is one thing us vegans are in no shortage of, whether it be going out and buying one or using the copious recipes available. In this post I'm going to go through a few different options to make sure you've never got a shortage of cake in your life, heaven forbid!

I’m going to begin with an Artisan Cakery in London called ‘Cat and the Cream’. They make both cupcakes and cakes that are wheat free, soya free and dairy free, and let me tell you that flavour is not sacrificed in the process. Their two main stock lists are ‘Whole foods’ and the brilliant food delivery service called ‘Ocado’ (which is really worth looking into by the way). The flavour of the cake that, pictured below, is an incredible concoction of ‘Chocolate, Coconut & Raspberry with Chocolate Icing’. Holy moly it's good.

If you do happen to live in the Manchester area and you haven’t yet heard of the grocery store haven called ‘Unicorn’ then you are living under an incredibly deprived and big rock. Anywho, from their deli I tried a delicious ‘Black Cat Cakery’ chocolate cake. ‘Black Cat Cakery’ is another vegan cake business offering a variety of cakes which can be found at their various suppliers- Unicorn Grocery, Z-Art’s Café, Oklahoma Café and the Eighth Day Café.

In my London for Vegan’s video on YouTube I mentioned a small Vegan and Gluten Free Bakery in Camden called ‘Cookies and Scream’. It’s in a fairly central location and I found it really easy to find so if you’re in that area check them out. They predominately do varying treats but they also offer excellent cakes. So, have a look at my video for more details which can be found here: (link will be added asap)

Finally, if you’re a lot lazy then I am then you may well be interested in getting out your pinny and mixing bowl and make your own cakes. If so then a book which I highly recommend is the ‘Ms Cupcake’ Cookbook. I met Ms Cupcake at her gorgeous bakery in Brixton, South West London, at a book signing for Chloe Coscarelli, whilst there I felt it only polite to try 4 of her cupcakes. Again, my lord, her and her team have a true gift! Her cookbook is a bible full of her vegan cake recipes (kind of in the name really), so this would be a wonderful place to start if you’re looking at making your own. She also offers some classes, so if you’re a complete novice then this may possibly be a good thing to look into.

Again, talking of Chloe Coscarelli, her book also has some great cake recipes – including the recipe which made her famous in the cooking word with which she won the competition ‘Cupcake Wars’. She’s also got a new book, which I haven’t managed to find the time to look at in too much detail, which is a book full of her vegan puddings and deserts, etc.

So, I hope that you have found this useful giving you some ideas about how you can go about getting a cake fix whilst feeling relatively guilt free! 

Love, bean xx

‘Shall we just have a freezer tea?’

If you’re similar to my family then, especially mid-week, you’ll probably find yourself exhausted and a chore such as cooking being the last thing you feel like doing. This is when the life-saving freezer type dinners come in handy. Now, don’t be misunderstood – I am not implying that all health and wellbeing should be forgotten and that you should resort to some dreaded poison like a ‘pot-noodle’. No, a freezer is a magical thing which can be filled with almost anything you wish and stored until a convenient time. Whilst I remember, they’re also great for putting frozen fruit in and using them for smoothies if you don’t want to risk buying lots of fresh fruit and it going off before you use it.

I think things such as burgers or soup are great for making a big batch of, freezing and just taking out as and when you need them. They're also perfect if you live by yourself and don’t want to waste extra food. Although I keep on mentioning her I think Chloe Coscarelli’s book is pretty good for freezer type foods. If you're not the type who wants to make the big batches of food in the first place then I keep loads of different foods such as various quorn products (careful if you buy quorn in the UK as it isn't vegan) and 'Linda McCartney' veggies foods teamed with chips and beans - now that really is a classic freezer meal! Besides from freezer foods there are also the innocent microwaves pots which are vegan and simply need to be popped into the microwave for a few minutes (not a huge fan of microwaves so if you've got the patience for more washing up then heating them is another alternative).

The pictures are of a meal including some burgers Mum had previously made teamed with some homegrown beans, potatoes and sauces! Was pretty delicious and impeccably easy in all honesty. Now bearing in mind, if it hadn’t been for Mum I most likely wouldn't have gone to quite so much effort regarding the condiments, etc but sauces can be made and kept in the fridge for quite a while too - a great substitute for not always simply having mayo, etc. 

I hope you've found this useful as unless you forget what you've already put in the freezer it's can be a real life saver. Let me know if you’ve got any questions or suggestions!

Love, bean xx

Vegan fry-up? Yes please.

If I were to combine the words 'fry-up' and 'healthy' you'd probably think I was mad, but bear with me two minutes and I can open your eyes to this wonderful concept which is in fact a reality...


At the beginning of my vegan conversion a big question for me about alternatives was the classic 'fry-up'. For as long as I can remember my Sunday's have consisted of wearing pyjamas all day and eating the traditional English brunch; sausages, bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, mushrooms... Never did I expect to find a scrumptious, healthy and vegan alternative. And what was most surprising for me was how simple the formula is. So please read carefully as I'm about to give you the key to eternal happiness, well as close as you can get through the means of brunch.


* Linda McCartney veggie sausages (the red onion ones are particularly nice although they do contain egg whites sadly)
* Baked Beans (my mum sometimes makes them herself- they redefine perfection!)
* Scrambled tofu (there are no words.. I just can't... it's just so good...)
* Vegan mayonnaise (if you are an addict like me, no meal is complete without mayo)
* Toast (pretty self explanatory.)
* Tomatoes (I hate raw tomatoes, however when cooked well they are an absolute dream)
* Potatoes (my surname is Irish therefore I feel an obligation to eat potatoes at every opportunity)


I hasten to add that I am not a cook, I have zero skills in the culinary department and even I'm capable of making most of this meal (it's a pretty perfect hangover cure too!). You may be wondering whether I'm the most appropriate person to listen to when it comes to food but I make up for my lack of cooking skills in enthusiasm for eating. I am a huge fan of all things edible, and it just so happens that my Mum is a sublime cook. So she makes it and I eat it; it's an ideal arrangement.


Back to the point; find below a couple of pictures as an example of some of the components to the meal. It isn't the entire meal as I was in a rush but they show the integral foundations to the meal. If you think it all sounds fairly ordinary and bland just try it, I'm not sure what it is but the combination of all the foods is always absolutely divine. I'm pretty confident that you'll never look back to the greasy and health-problem provoking meat version, I certainly haven't.

love, bean xx

Are we really the intelligent ones?

When I look around nowadays, irrelevant of where I may be, I see people who are trying to give themselves a purpose. When young we are taught it's a vital thing to do, from being a toddler we're asked ‘what do you want to do when you're older?'. I walked around a city this afternoon for 3 hours just observing; mobiles, suits, rushing around, everything and everyone looked so serious. But if everything were to be stripped back, hypothetically you weren't able to recall anything prior to this moment, what would you be left with? Primarily you are simply left with your body anything else like the makeup, clothes, relationships and jobs are just what you've decided to add to your life. These other additional factors we can survive without, but what about an integral organ such as your lungs? You can survive without your career but lungs are a vital part to your survival. Yet people smoke in hope of maintaining and balancing their stress levels to excel in their career. Effectively, people are willing to literally die for their jobs. Of course, this is only one scenario I could go on forever listing the different harmful things that people do to their bodies in order to keep these impermeable parts of their lives thriving. Fascinating; this is human behaviour.

Our one true responsibility I believe in life is to look after our bodies simply in order to keep on living, I wonder how many people out there sacrifice things to do this job justice? It’s probably a good thing that our heart doesn’t rely on us to consciously keep the blood pumping around our body. Evidence from observing other human decisions would suggest that we’d probably all be dead in days due to our bizarre priority lists. Soon to be mothers tend to be very cautious to not smoke or drink and to take in extra nutrients all in order to care for their growing foetus. Then the baby is born and everything normally goes back to how it was before for the new mother. And as we grow up and have to look after ourselves this care for our ever-growing bodies gets thrown out the window too.

If you were in a house on fire your instinct would probably be to run as far away as fast as possible from the life threatening circumstance. It’s our animal instinct. Actions such as smoking is actively and consciously walking into that burning building. It’s slower but it will inevitably harm your body and ultimately it’s a death sentence. I often think animals are the more intelligent creatures because they listen to their bodies, they're happy to feel what they’re feeling and they do things in their best interest to thrive and stay alive. Animals only eat the food that they were designed to eat. Although humans can digest meat if you look at our teeth, as an example, they aren’t similar to those of a true carnivore, they are blunt and good for nibbling on foods such as vegetables. We can survive on a 100% plant based diet but we cannot survive on a diet composed purely of just meat. Interesting… I hope that you aren’t one of these people I have spoken about in this post, I hope you're somebody who takes care to nourish your body everyday and respect it for all that it does for you.

love, bean xx

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Ultimate favourite of the month; Booja-Booja

I think out of the few videos that I've put onto my YouTube channel so far I have mentioned in pretty much all of them a heavenly brand which is a slight obsession of mine; ''Booja-Booja''. There we go, blogpost done; enough said.

Well, I may say slightly more. It's a brand which I came across a few months back when my Mum & sister got given a box which was an assortment of various booja-booja chocolates. Of course, due to my nosey disposition I had to try them too. I can think of few pleasures in life which I deem equivalent to those feelings that I had tasting those chocolates for the first time. 

I found that my favourite of all the chocolates were probably the champagne truffles, made with french champagne. Each time I eat one of those little wonders it reminds me of the fact that some of the best things in life really do come in small packages. However I do generally care very little for small things, especially when it comes to chocolate, but the compact chocolate sized treat that Mr Booja created is suffice. Well, this is dependant on the type of day you've had, some days call for a slightly higher dosage of chocolate.

Of course, the next best thing to Booja chocolate is Booja ice-cream. Now this stuff really is dangerous, my self-control tends to be fairly in tact when it comes to the truffles but for the ice-cream? Forget it. I can easily guzzle my way through a freezers worth. The simplistic recipe leaves me dazzled every-time, if something so simple with barely a handful of ingredients is so scrumptious then why are all our supermarkets filled with chemically, poisonous shit? Excuse my french.

Writing this post I realise I'm also giving away the secrets to winning my heart. It's a simple formula really: Bean + Booja product = Happy Bean. I feel I have done my good deed for the day, sharing the meaning of life for all people to freely read as they please. Happy eating!

love, bean xx

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