The Orange Tree, Leicester

The Orange Tree, on Leicester’s High Street, is one of the best places in the centre of town to get a bite to eat and have a drink. It’s owned by the same people as the Lansdowne and while it does have a lot in common with its sister pub (The O Bar in the West End is in the same small chain, which also has branches in Nottingham and Loughborough) it’s quite a bit more low-key and the décor is a bit more rough and ready, and all the better for it. It’s also got arguably the best and hardest music quiz in town; you’ll need a very broad but deep knowledge to stand a chance against the regulars.

The Orange Tree actually has a special place in our hearts: it was where we had our first date and we regularly return there of an evening.

In terms of food it doesn’t do quite as well as the Lansdowne but in the last year or so its menus (they change every season) have included at least one marked vegan option each time and the specials do sometimes include something vegan. While the food is generally very good quality and delicious, it does tend to suffer from the same problem as the Lansdowne in assuming, for some reason, that vegans only ever want very small portions.

The last meal I had there, one of the specials, was aubergine and chickpea köfte* with toasted flatbread and vegan yoghurt with mint (pictured). It was great, if a bit oily, but it really wasn’t that much, and when you’re paying more or less the same as the pretty generous meat options, that’s definitely a drawback.

The Orange Tree, like the Lansdowne, will remain a regular watering hole for us in Leicester, but I just wish they’d make the vegan options a bit more substantial.

*Interestingly, there’s currently a ban in Turkey on traditional çiğ köfte made using raw meat (at least at street stalls) and they are now made with bulgur wheat instead, making them vegan. A Turkish friend of mine brought some of these back from a trip a couple of years ago and they taste fantastic. They’re made from bulgur mashed with tomato paste and spices and eaten with lettuce and lemon juice. I’ll try and get a good recipe and test them out for a future post.

The problem with PETA

PETA are one of the biggest names in animal rights and vegan activism. But their form of animal liberation is built, in large part, on the exploitation of women and the creation and dissemination of offensive and misogynistic images.

If you Google 'PETA advert' you will be faced with a seemingly endless parade of naked or almost-naked women*. Women tied up; women shrink-wrapped and bloody, like victims on Law & Order; women in sexy lingerie; women reduced to the sum of their parts. Within the thousands of images on that Google search, there are a handful of pictures of men. I counted one naked, two topless and five fully dressed male models and celebrities, to literally hundreds upon hundreds of women.

Other PETA adverts show a woman in skimpy underwear with pubic hair peeking out the sides and the tagline: Fur trim - Unattractive. Or how about poster featuring a disgustingly body-shaming cartoon of a chubby woman in a bikini with the slogan: Save the whales - Lose the blubber. Go vegetarian? Scrolling through images from PETA adverts is like being assaulted in the eyeballs. It's virulently misogynist, fatphobic, hateful. It makes me want to go and eat a huge beefburger just to say "fuck you."

No doubt PETA think that the woman-as-slab-of-meat approach to advertising is very clever and subversive - a way to wake people up the realities of the meat industry, to ask people to have compassion for animals by saying "we wouldn't treat a human being like this so why do it to another animal?" But if all of this is about compassion, why are we women not worthy of a little compassion? In a world where women are reduced to pieces of meat every single day, where degradations are enacted on our bodies for entertainment or hatred or both, there's nothing clever about exploiting womens bodies: it's just the same old shit.

PETA need to realise how alienating their current approach is: any liberation that relies on the objectification, subjugation or exploitation of another group is not a 'liberation' that I want to be part of.

* I would have included some here, but I couldn't stomach hosting such hateful images

Reviewed: Vegan Life Magazine

When the November/December issue of Vegan Life magazine fell through our letterbox (courtesy of the publishers - thanks guys!), I have to admit to being a little skeptical. Previous experiences with vegan media were... not positive, so expectations were low. How nice, then, to be pleasantly surprised.

Most immediately noticeable were the high production values: the combination of stylishly matte paper and well designed, thoroughly edited pages make a nice change from the somewhat amateurish look of a lot of other vegan media. Inside, the magazine was packed full of interesting articles and some gorgeous food photography. The content is very much aimed at a young, hip market, with articles on how to find vegan hairdye, a guide to vegan tattooing, and an interview with the TeenVGN founders.

Travelling while vegan can present challenges, so I appreciated the articles on eating vegan in places as diverse as Oxford, England and Grenada, in the Caribbean. Most refreshingly, there was little of the focus on health usually found in vegan & vegetarian press; yes, there were a couple of interviews with personal trainer/mountaineer types, but these were greatly outnumbered by recipes for scrummy-looking bakes and snacks such as stuffed potato skins. I also greatly enjoyed an article in defence of vegan junk food (a great and enduring love of us Hungry Vegans).

Overall, then, I'd thoroughly recommend Vegan Life. Thanks to the wide range of articles and the diverse but delicious recipes, it's definitely a magazine I'll be buying in future.

Hot Pepper Jelly, Crouch End, London

A recent trip to London saw us searching Crouch End for somewhere to have breakfast. Despite a seeming abundance of cafés in the area, there weren’t many that offered anything like a vegan breakfast. Finding a cooked vegan breakfast normally involves subtracting items from the vegetarian option, but often that doesn’t leave much on the plate and I always resent paying the same price when the dearest items (the egg, the Quorn sausages – why always Quorn!?) are taken off.

In the end we returned to a small café we’d been to on a previous trip. Hot Pepper Jelly, named after the jam they make and sell, is a lovely, snug spot and we were lucky to get a table given how popular it obviously is on a Sunday morning. It’s not an exclusively vegan or vegetarian joint, but don’t let that put you off.

The last time we were there I had to do the usual thing of having the vegetarian breakfast without x, y and z. I was thrilled to see that they’d renewed their menu and now had a specifically vegan breakfast, along with several other vegan options for breakfast and lunch.

While the homemade hash browns were a bit herby for my tastes, the inclusion of Linda McCartney sausages, the saviour of many a vegan breakfast (and lunch, and dinner, and snacks throughout the day), was very welcome. It certainly was a hearty meal, if a bit pricy at around £8.00 – but I guess that’s what to expect in London, and went down well with a cranberry juice and a Matcha soy latte.

I’d love to go back again and try some of the other vegan items on the menu. If you’re in Crouch End and looking for somewhere to eat I can definitely recommend Hot Pepper Jelly.

Baked: Pfefferkuchen (Spiced Cookies)

I'm a Christmas freak and love to spend December baking tasty treats for ourselves and to give as gifts. These German spice cookies are a cross between traditional gingerbread and lebkuchen. My recipe is based on the one in Another Dinner Is Possible, with some amendments. 

Ingredients:
150g dairy-free margarine (at room temperature)
150g soft brown sugar
100g caster sugar
3 tbps golden syrup
2 tsps ground cinnamon
1 tsp each ground ginger, ground cardamom and ground cloves
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
500g plain flour
Warm water

1. Beat the margarine with the sugar and golden syrup until creamy.
2. Add the ground spices and bicarbonate of soda to the flour and mix.
3. Add the flour mixture to the margarine bit by bit, kneading until you have a good dough. At this point, you may need to add a small amount of water to bring the dough together.
4. Wrap the dough in greaseproof paper and refrigerate for 12 hours, then take out and leave in a cool place for another 12 hours.
5. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6.
6. Roll the dough out to 2-3mm thick and use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Lay on baking paper or a greased baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes.
7. Leave to cool on a wire rack. They should keep for a few days in an air-tight tin, or they will make a lovely gift popped in a cellophane bag and tied with festive ribbon. The dough will also keep in the fridge for longer than 12 hours if needed - I usually bake half the dough and save the remainder for later in the week, when another batch makes a welcome addition to the empty biscuit tin.

V Revolution, Manchester

Great vegan food is becoming ever easier to find in the UK, and Manchester is at the forefront. On a recent weekend trip we ate a delicious evening meal at Ning, a Malaysian restaurant in the Northern Quarter (a menu that specifies vegan options and has great cocktails? Count us in) and visited V Revolution not once, but twice.

In all honesty, this place was the main reason for our trip to Manchester in the first place. Part-food store, part-record shop and punk hangout, part-American diner-style eatery, V Revolution is all-awesome. From the cute booths to the good value menu, it makes a great place to hang out and have a quick bite to eat.

Deliberately focusing on vegan versions of junk food - from hot dogs to 'chicken' burgers to ice cream floats - V Revolution reminds me of the many vegan fast food joints in Berlin. The menu is restricted to burgers, hot dogs and grilled sandwiches, but there's plentiful choice within those categories and the prices are extremely reasonable. My tasty and filling Chicken Royale burger (served with a side of tortilla chips and piled high with lettuce, cheese and mayo) was only £4, which is excellent value for the quality of the food. Next time you find yourself in Manchester, do take a walk to the far end of Oldham Street to check out V Revolution: you won't regret making the journey.

Baked: Vegan Earl Grey tea loaf

Now that the weather is cooler, I'm more inclined to potter in the kitchen for hours experimenting with new recipes. I drink industrial quantities of Earl Grey tea so when I saw Gwen's recipe for an Earl Grey tea loaf, I was on board immediately and started looking for ways to veganise it.

After scouring cookbooks and the internet I settled on this recipe, making a few minor changes because I can never just follow a set of instructions like a normal person. The result was a deliciously sweet and moist cake with a generous hint of spice: I actually preferred it to the non-vegan version. This is also low in fat and, of course, egg and dairy-free, so perfect for people with allergies.

Ingredients
2 Earl Grey tea bags
1 cup water
1 cup dried fruit (I used sultanas)
A handful of dried mixed peel
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup oil (sunflower or vegetable work best, and are cheapest too)
2 cups self-raising flour
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
A generous tablespoon brown demerara sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180c or gas mark 4. Grease and line a loaf tin.

2. Combine the tea bags, water, oil,lemon juice, dried fruit and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to the boil then remove from heat and allow to sit for 5 minutes for the tea to infuse.

3. Squeeze tea bags and discard them, transferring the rest of the mixture from the pan into a bowl.

4. Sift together the flour and spices and add to the bowl, mixing well. The batter will look a little aerated at this point.

5. Pour the batter into the lined tin, smooth down and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

6. Cool slightly before removing from the tin, then slice and serve with a hot cup of Earl Grey tea.

All measurements are given in cups - use a proper set of baking cups to ensure quantities are accurate.