Time for a Pamper

When I walk around shops today I get slightly fed up of seeing the same brands and designers over and over. Perhaps I am alone in this but I can't help but feel inclined to buy products that are unique. I love brands that pride themselves on being different, even if they have shops on every high street in the country, just making an effort to stand out from other shops is enough of an attraction to make me want to have a look. Lush is a great example of this with their strong ethical views towards animal welfare being proudly displayed on their shopping bags and in their window displays. However I find it even more thrilling when I find a brand that isn't on high streets but instead has to be found mostly by being at the right place at the right time, such as when I came across 'Bathing Beauty' at 'VegFest' last year.

'Bathing Beauty' is a hand made collection of products made by a lady named George from North Wales who in her spare time picks ingredients, experiments with them, makes her products and then sells them across the country. Yet she still has time to raise her children, go to work, look after her horses and live a full life. Remarkable. I got chatting to her and she began to explain the background behind some of her products and the process of making them. She normally starts with finding an ailment and then tries to make a product accordingly. All of her different soaps, oils, lotions and potions smell absolutely divine and to top it all of each and every one is packaged beautifully. As can be imagined my excitement levels were at an all time high when I discovered all of this.

When making time to indulge myself, by having a simple bath or a full blown pampering session, I've found myself automatically being drawn to her products as they never fail to impress and fulfil their function. One particular detail I like is how the pots for the bath salts are handmade by a man in her local village. I can't help but feel that these little details amalgamate to making my pampering sessions, and myself, feel extra special. She makes a huge array of products for all various functions and purposes catering for the masses for whether you have specific considerations or not. Many of her products are vegan and all of them are free from animal testing. I rapidly made my way through testing many of her products and am now coming to the end of my second buy. I thoroughly recommend having a browse through her website if you're on the hunt for luxurious bathing products that will not fail to impress.

love, bean xx

Lunch Box #2 (Falafel & Hummus Wrap)

I've decided I'm going to try and keep these 'Lunchbox' posts relatively short and try not to drone on and just get to the point! So, without further ado - day 2 in my lunchbox consisted of fairly basic things, my main part was my wrap which had in it hummus, falafel and some leftover pesto (just for the sake of it!). What a heavenly combination it was! 

The other bits and bobs were just things that I could easily snack on throughout the day without too much hassle, which were grapes, celery chunks with a peanut butter sauce and my favourite corn chips (same as the yesterday I know but they go really well with wraps too!).

I finished it all off with one of my favourite drinks at the moment; Fentimans Rose Lemonade. This lemonade is incredible and they also do a gorgeous Victorian style Lemonade which is equally as delicious so I try and alternate between the two.

All in all it was a pretty delicious yet exceedingly simple and quick lunch, filling me up without making me feel stodgy and regretful later.  

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

Cat & the Cream Vegan Cupcakes

Today I just wanted to do a quick followup on the blogpost I did a week or so ago about cake, go and read that first here. In that blog I mentioned about lots of different vegan cakes but in this post I want to specifically talk about the company 'Cat & the Cream'. One of the main reasons I am re-mentioning them is due to the fact that my Mum was very enthusiastic on the 'Ocado' order and brought 4 different flavours of their cupcakes!

The first one was a beautiful and refreshing combination of 'Lemon, Lime Grapefruit & Coconut' which tasted pretty exotic and I loved that there were so many fresh flavours in one cupcake, including 'coconut' which is one of my favourite ingredients ever!  

This was the one I'd already had before, which I'd teamed with vegan squirty cream and strawberries for a complete pudding, which is 'Chocolate, Coconut & Raspberry with Chocolate Icing'. This is of course the perfect cupcake for all you chocolate addicts!

I found this one a bit more unusual as it's 'Chocolate, Fresh Mint Ganache & Raspberry Icing'. The mint flavours just gave it a very different and exciting element which I don't think you find too often in cupcakes and with the raspberry icing it really just lifted the chocolate. 

The final one was a cupcake that I would never have had down as my first choice but it was so delicious, it was 'Pear, Hazelnut & Chocolate Chip with Hazelnut Icing'. Now, I have only recently really gotten into nuts and I'm putting them with everything so what better then having them in a cupcake!

So, as I said we got ours from 'Ocado', but may I add that I didn't eat all of them in one go and I did of course share them ;) They're very reasonably sized and a perfect treat so I like to take them every other week or so to college with me. I love all of the different available flavours and they last for quite a long time too which is really useful. And of course the best thing about them is that they're vegan, dairy free, wheat free & soya free whilst tasting absolutely delicious! 

Let me know if you've tried them before and what flavour you would like to try!

love, bean xx

Going to School & Home Education

Sadly it's that time of year again. For children from the UK September is the month that is the start of a new academic year. For some this means a fabulous prospect full of new beginnings but for others, it just means another dreaded year of getting up early. I was an early dropout of the schooling system, leaving at 15, deciding that I could probably do a better job then my teachers at preparing myself for my exams (there were, of course, other reasons too may I add!). It just so happened that teaching myself opened up many doors of opportunity and it enabled me to have my first proper taste of what the performing industry was like too in the big wide world. It's safe to say, I learnt a lot from teaching myself but I equally learnt as much before, when I'd gone to 8 schools altogether, I was certainly never 'deprived' of the school experience! 

The 8 schools varied greatly for me, each one teaching me different lessons - the majority of the lessons being of course outside the classroom. I think the problems I found at school were usually about fitting in whilst remaining true to who I am. I was interested in quite a few different types of things then the majority of other people, veganism being a prime example, and conforming to fit in and forget these interests was never my strong point. The other aspect I struggled with at school was that it wasn't until much later on that I found out that I'm dyslexic. This gave me a much stronger understanding of how my brain tends to work in a different way to other people, and how it also effects the best ways for me to learn. So when I taught myself I was able to plan it all in a way that was specific to the best way in which I learn. 

In retrospect I suppose I could have stayed at some of the schools for longer then my average of about 18 months, but I never regret it because from each school I learnt invaluable things about myself. There are so many things to say about the topic of school because it's a time of so much growth and self-discovery. You go through puberty, have the stress of sitting exams all whilst trying to balance your hobbies and friends as-well. It's a very demanding time filled with a lot of expectations and I don't believe that anybody goes through school without copious difficulties along the way. At the time it can feel like the be all and end all and that you're the only person in the entire world feeling how you're feeling but this just isn't the case. I now see that there's much more to life then being one of the 'popular people' and getting the perfect grades!

I am now venturing back into conventional education (sort of) by going to college and doing a qualification in performing arts, I must admit I am slightly nervous because no matter how many times you put yourself into a completely new situation the initial nerves always seem to crop up. I'm hoping that due to there being a big similarity between us all, in the sense that we all love performing, that it will be easier in terms of friends then in school but only time will tell! The video, click on the picture below, is showing you my college morning routine, it was pretty much the same when I was at school (the majority of the products I use are vegan). Feel free to let me know how you found/are finding being at school!

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