Christmas Times!

I spent all of Christmas Day with this one lying on top of me. 

Blogmas Day 24: Blogmas Fail

So I guess it's safe to say I completely failed at Blogmas. I got off to such a good start, and was posting everything day, but then I got sick. I caught a cold and was feeling miserable so didn't blog much, and then I was completely floored by the flu. I'm convinced it was because this was the first year in 5 years that I've had the flu jag. I wasn't going to get it, but one of my favourite journalists kept telling me i should do it, so I did. I woke up last Wednesday feeling achy and sore all over, but I figured it was down to the fact I hadn't been sleeping. By lunch, I was sitting beside a heater shivering and my legs were agony. I got sent home meaning I missed the pink carpet we rolled out for Priscilla.

i spent the next few days in bed. You know you're really unwell when you barely walk from bed to the sofa, and low and cry because no matter how many pills you take, you're head is still sore.

So fast forward a few days and I'm back at work, but still not feeling 100%. I've been out once socially in over a week and I forgot to take any photos, so I don't have much else to say.

I plan to relaunch this blog in the new year with lots of regular updates. We've got some great shows coming to the Edinburgh Playhouse which means there's lots of exciting press plans to talk about. I also want to blog more about my plant-based diet to encourage me to eat well all the time. And next year is my last year before I'm 30, so it's time to plan some fun adventures starting with jumping out a plane. 

Blogmas Day 15: The Office Night Out

I may have slipped up and missed three days of Blogmas. I really thought I'd be able to post every single day, but I wasn't feeling well at the weekend, and then I didn't plan anything in advance for yesterday. I'm back now though, and plan to try and blog each day until Christmas.

Last night, we had out office night out for Christmas. We had a lovely Italian meal to start with, before moving onto a couple of bars for some drinks.

I planned to take lots of photos and do a bigger blog update, but it turns out there's only a couple of pictures from the whole night.

Blogmas Day 11: Deck The Hauls Of Advent

This year, I decided to really get into advent by buying my first ever beauty advent calendar. There's so many out there to chose from, but I picked the Tanya Burr one because a) she's one of the people I watch most on YouTube and b) It was reduced from £25 to £15 which seemed like a pretty good deal.

I'm the biggest fan of false eyelashes, but I'm pretty impressed with everything else, especially the eye shadow and lip glosses.

I also may have finished opening it all before the 12th of December, but I really wanted to see what was behind door 12.

Blogmas Day 10: My Christmas Tree Is Up!!!

Today's blogmas post is going up a little bit later than I had planned. I've not got in the habit of writing posts in advance and I didn't get home from work until after 8pm.

My Christmas tree is finally up!! Since I don't have a car, I managed to find a decent tree in Argos with pretty cheap delivery, although they did show up at a completely different time than I had booked the delivery in at which always seems to be the case.

My decorations are a collection I've built up over the years. My brother bought me the Santa duck when he was in London last year, and my mum bought me all the owl decorations. My favourite ones are the little girl holding the newspaper which I picked up in Macy's NY when I was there a couple of years ago, and The Rescuers one I bought myself in London this year.

I'm trying to decorations for the rest of my flat, so I'll do some kind of Christmas flat tour post in the next few days.

Blogmas Day 9: What I Ate Wednesday

I'm going to be relaunching my blog in the new year with more regular updates focusing more on vegan food and my job, so I thought I would ease myself back in by starting 'What I Ate Wednesday'.

For breakfast, I had a big bowl of porridge made with almond milk, cacao and cinnamon. I topped it with banana, frozen blueberries and mixed seeds. I also drank half a litre of water with lemon and my favourite Juice Warrior drink.

I ended up going out to do some shopping at lunch, so stopped by Henderson's to pick up something to eat. I went for a vegan pesto roll and a chocolate brownie made with sweet potato.

I'm going out straight from work tonight to see my first pantomime of the year, so I'm probably not going to have time to a) eat much dinner or b) blog what I do eat. I guess you're going to imagine that I picked up something quickly to eat and it probably tasted good.

 

I had a couple of snacks throughout the day including a packet of skips, two tangerines and a couple of Oreos which I didn't take a photo of.

But yeah, that's my first step back into regular food blogging on a Wednesday. I feel like it started off well, but went a little downhill because I know I probably won't have time for a proper dinner. I guess there's always tomorrow to try eat three proper meals.

Blogmas Day 8: Vegfest Scotland Haul

1. Missy Vegan Cupcakes - I've picked up lots of different cakes from Missy Vegan Cupcakes at various markets and shows, but this was the first time I've had a chance to buy their brownies. I went for the traditional chocolate brownie and a sweet potato blondie, and both tasted really, really good. If you didn't know any better, then you'd never have guessed they were vegan. 

2. Juice Warrior - The best news to come out of Vegfest Scotland was that Juice Warrior is looking for premises in Edinburgh. If you haven't tried juice from Juice Warrior then you're seriously missing out. They make the best cold-pressed juices, and the Pink Russian is one of my favourites. 

3. Ten Acre - If there's one thing I miss now that I'm vegan it's cheese and onion crisps, and Ten Acre is the only company I've found so far that makes a kind I can eat. I just wish I had bought more than one bag because I've still never found any on sale in any shops up here. 

4. Considerit -  Not only did Considerit have salted caramel ice cream at Vegfest, but they also had a big stock of their chocolate bars which meant i got to try the sea salt caramel one for the first time. It might sound like an exaggeration, but it was hands down the best vegan chocolate bar I've ever eaten.

5. Almighty Foods - I hadn't tried anything by Almighty Foods until Vegfest, but their Mindful Mylk chocolate is so creamy that it tasted just like normal milk chocolate, and fills the space left behind my the fact I can no longer eat Cadbury's chocolate. 

6. Ananda Foods  - I'd be the first to admit I was never a giant fan of wagon wheels before, but Ananda's make a gourmet one tastes more like a mini cake than a wagon wheel. They also had a deal on marshmallows so I picked up of those to try too. 

Blogmas Day 7: Vegfest Scotland

Vegfest finally made its way up to Scotland, and I was there on Sunday to stuff my face with pretty much all the vegan food I could find. I'd been following #VegfestScotland on Twitter on Saturday, so I had a good idea of what stalls would be there before I'd even stepped foot in the SECC.

The first stall we came across was Bute Island who had lots of creamy sheeese to sample, and it gave me a chance to finally try the garlic and herb one. The next stall was Fry's Family Foods who had their new rice protein and chia nuggets to try. I only discovered their products last year when I realised I could no longer eat Quorn because it contains egg, but actually Fry's products taste better than Quorn ever did anyway.

We took a look around all the stalls and sampled lots of chocolate including some of my favourites like Crazy4Cocoa  and Almighty Foods, cheese from Vegusto, and Secret Sausages. We also had a look at the information stands and beauty and clothing stalls, before we headed to the Henderson's stand for a big slice of pizza for lunch.

Ananda Foods

Juice Warrior

Considerit 

Cool Jerk 

Missy Vegan Cupcakes

After lunch, we took a walk back around everything so I pick up all the food I wanted to buy. My mum also went off by herself to get me some surprises which I'll be getting for either Christmas or my birthday. 

If you want to see all the food I bought, then check back tomorrow for my Vegfest haul. 

Blogmas Day 6 - Vegan Christmas Sweets

This Christmas will only be my second since I started following a plant based diet, so I'm still getting used to not being able to eat my way through boxes of Celebrations and bags of chocolate coins in December. Luckily, there's lots of vegan friendly chocolate out there to stuff your face with this festive season, and I've picked out my top 5 for you to have a look at.

1. Booja Booja

I got a box of these as a present when I was leaving my old job, and they were some of the best truffles I've ever tasted. I'm not really a big fan of the ginger or expresso ones, but all the other ones are delicious, especially the champagne ones.

2. Hotel Chocolat 

Hotel Chocolat do a range of dark chocolates which are suitable for vegans, but this is one of the more exciting in the range. It's their chocolate & cranberry slab and it's only £3.95.

3. Moo Free Chocolate

Moo Free chocolate is probably the brand of vegan chocolate I eat the most, especially since there's a shop across from my work that sells it. They also make one of the only selection boxes I've come across.

4. Rudolph's Round Up

Round Ups are vegan wagon wheels that taste so much better than original wagon wheels. I only had one for the first time last month, but I managed to pick up a few at Vegfest Scotland today (I'll do a vegan haul in the next post) to last me through Christmas.

5. Caramel Choices

I got these in an Easter Egg this year, and they filled the void left behind the fact I can no longer eat a Cadbury's Caramel. Trust me, they taste just as good!

Blogmas Day 5 - My Christmas Wish List

Since it's day 5 of Blogmas, I thought it was about time I put together a Christmas Wish List. If you didn't already know, my birthday is two weeks after Christmas, so it's a bit of a birthday list too. To be honest, there's not anything that I really need, but I had a look online and picked a few things out that I wouldn't say no to receiving for Christmas or my birthday.

1. Unicorn Tears Gin

Gin is something that I'm still slowly getting into, and it taking a little longer than I thought it would, but I have a feeling this is a gin you can't not like the taste of.

2. Harry Potter books

I know I'm over a decade late to the party, but I'm become obsessed with the Harry Potter books in the last couple of months. I'm almost finished book number four, so I need to get started on the remaining books as soon as I can. 

3. 'Vegans For Real' Baseball Shirt

I've been meaning to pick up this shirt the last couple of times I've been in the Vegan Cross Shop in London, but I always get distracted by all the food they have. I only own one baseball shirt at the moment, so I feel like this would be a good addition to my wardrobe.

4. Unicorn Night Light

It's a UNICORN NIGHT LIGHT!! I don't even need to explain why this is on my list. And yes, I know my wish list as a bit of an theme going on.

5. Disney Vans

And finally, I thought I should pick something without a unicorn on it. I already have the Little Mermaid ones, but it's hard not want the Cheshire Cat ones too.

So that's my little Christmas Wish List. If you've not bought me a present yet, then feel free to pick something from the list above!

Blogmas Day 4: My Christmas Playlist

Welcome to Blogmas day 4!

For today's blog, I thought I would share my ultimate Christmas playlist.

If you didn't guess from the album cover above, one of my favourite Christmas records is The OC Chrismukkah album. If you haven't listened to it before and loved The OC as much as I did, then it's sort of a must-have album to get a copy of for Christmas.

My favourite song on the record is the Ron Sexsmith track below, and the rest of my playlist is made up some lesser known and really classic festive songs.

Ron Sexsmith - Maybe This Christmas

Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

She & Him - Little Saint Nick

Darlene Love - All Alone On Christmas

Elton John - Step Into Christmas

Aled Jones - Walking In The Air

Jimmy Eat World - Last Christmas

Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

Julian Casablancas - I Wish It Was Christmas Today

Home Alone - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Blogmas Day 3: Street of Light

I may have spent the first couple of days of Blogmas feeling like I was going to die from whatever flu bug I had managed to pick up, but last night I finally got hold of some Christmas cheer in the best way possible.

If you haven't heard of the Virgin Money Street of Light in Edinburgh, then look at how incredible it looks.

The Street of Light is a huge installation on the Royal Mile as part of Edinburgh's Christmas. There's over 600,000 thousand lights installed in the canopy which light up in time to pre-recorded versions of Christmas songs sang by four local choirs. I've never seen anything like it before, and I guarantee it will put you in the Christmas mood as soon as you see it.

Most of the tickets for the event were snapped up straight away, but 500 tickets for each show are released at 9pm the day before. If you want to reserve your free tickets, which I couldn't recommend you do more, then just visit the website here - https://www.virginmoneystreetoflight.com/tickets.

Blogmas Day 1 & 2: Flu

It's that time of year again! I get to eat chocolate as soon as I wake up, and it's the start of blogmas. I follow lots of people who take part in both blogmas and vlogmas every December, but I've decided to challenge myself to actually take part this year.

Things got off to bit of a slow start since I've spent the past few days shaking off a horrible flu bug and generally feeling like blogging was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. So I thought I'd share of a photo of my advent calendar and let everyone know that normal blogmas will resume tomorow. I plan to spend the month blogging about how I'm celebrating Christmas in Edinburgh, and also sharing playlists, recipes and everything else you can think of to do with this festive time of year.

So I hope you enjoy checking back throughout December!

Sarah x

World Vegan Month: Top Vegan Restaurants in Edinburgh

Have you ever considered going vegan? Well if it's something you've thought about, then World Vegan Month is here to help. All throughout November there's lots of different things happening to educate people about veganism, and help those who want to make the transition to this lifestyle. Not only are there a growing number of people becoming vegan these days, but restaurants are really starting to cater for those people who choose to follow a plant-based diet.

Here's my top places in Edinburgh to eat if you're looking to try out some delicious vegan food.

Henderson's
Henderson's is a bit on institution in Edinburgh among those who don't eat meat. Earlier this year, its vegetarian bistro changed to become the city's first fully vegan restaurant. The menu includes Henderson's famous haggis served with potato and turnip mash and red wine gravy, as well as salads, nachos, and lots of other main courses. If you've not got time to sit down for a meal, then you can drop into the deli round to corner and pick from their selection of sandwiches, burgers, salads, or even try their new vegan scones.

The Baked Potato Shop
This tiny baked potato shop at the top of Cockburn Street usually has a queue of people out the door waiting for the best baked potatoes in town. Forget the toppings you're used to and try something different like curried rice, fruity coleslaw, chili and haggis. Plus there are lots of different salad options with avocado, quinoa and chickpeas to name but a few. And if you're still hungry after their large portions, then the shop also has a couple of cakes on the counter too.

Nova Vegetarian Kitchen
Gone are the days of ordering pizza without cheese thanks to this new Italian restaurant in Edinburgh. While the restaurant isn't fully vegan, they have a huge variety of pizza made with vegan mozzarella and different meat substitutes. There's also a great choice of pasta dishes including spaghetti bolognese and lasagne made with soya mince. And forget about only having fruit salad as an option for desert because Nova has some great cheesecakes on the menu to sweeten the deal.

Brass Monkey
Some people would argue that the best vegan hotdog in Scotland can be found in Bloc in Glasgow, but Edinburgh has its own to rival it. Brass Monkey in Leith has been serving up a great selection of vegan food for a while now including its vegan chilidog topped with bean and pepper chilli, beer soaked onions and mustard. If that's not your thing, then the menu also has vegan dishes including soup, curry, flatbreads and burgers.

BBL
Breakfast, Brunch and Lunch is a saviour for vegans in Edinburgh who don't always want a smoothie or fruit for breakfast. This city centre café, which also sells meat, is serving its own homemade vegan sausages. If that wasn't enough, they're serving both lorne and link ones. I've had a lot of vegan sausages in the past two years, but never found anywhere selling lorne ones before BBL added it to their menu. I guess that's why this café is proving to be really popular among vegans in the city.

Treacle
Situated on Broughton Street, Treacle is another Edinburgh restaurant expanding its meat-free options. They serve a banh mi with roasted cauliflower, zucchini, radish, cashews and red chili glaze, shitake mushroom noodles, and there are some salad and starter options too. They might not have any suitable desert options on the menu yet, but let's hope that's something in development to match their other great vegan dishes.

Radio Forth Awards

In 2004, I remember going to the Radio Forth Awards in Edinburgh. It was a much smaller event back then, and I was only there to help out with some of the charity aspects of the day. I was also only 17 at the time, and never thought I'd be back there 11 years later as a guest on my own table. 

This year's event started with a fantastic three course meal. I'm always sceptical about what the vegan option will be at events like this, since I've been served fruit salad as a starter and dessert at several before. It's almost like people think you won't notice if they serve the same dish on a different plate.

I forgot to take a photo of the starter which was a roasted vegetable and pastry dish, but I did get a photos of my other courses. The main course was a stuffed mushroom served with potatoes and roasted vegetables. It was really nice, even though I don't like anything to do with mushrooms, so that was left in the middle of the plate.

For dessert, I got a some kind of jelly, fruit, and cream dish which not only looked like the dessert everyone else was eating, but it was the first time I've not been served a fruit salad at an event like this.

The awards were presented by Arlene Stewart and Grant Stott, and given out to local people who have done great things and those in the entertainment industry. The Edinburgh Playhouse sponsors the Icon Award which this year went to Travis. We also managed to spot our front cover photo from my Priscilla photocall on the big screen at one point during the show.

And here's a Playhouse team photo from the end of the event when we're all still look relatively fresh!

What's Been Happening - The October Issue

Once again, I'e failed to properly blog during October. So here's a little update on what is happening right now (well that parts I can talk about anyway).

Last weekend, I got to watch one of my best friends from uni get married. The BAJO girls minus Zee were all there at the Vue in Bathgate to celebrate Jayne and Martin's big day. It's first time I've been at the venue, but it was beautiful, and nice to spend a day with friends I don't get to see that often.

So what else has happened this month?

1. I joined the gym. 

2. I've become obsessed with Homeland and reading Harry Potter.

3. Shrek The Musical arrived at work meaning I got to take the cast to Edinburgh Castle for this photocall

London Trip: Camden, NFL and vegan cakes

I wanted to get the rest of my London photos up days ago, but I've not had time between work, being off work sick, and wanting to spend most of my time reading Harry Potter.

Aside from my Harry Potter adventures in the post below, the main reason we were down in London was to watch Miami Dolphins play at Wembley Stadium, but I also found some time to visit Cookies and Scream in Camden for lots of vegan cakes.