Book Review: Nourishing Noodles by Chris Anca

Australian 'Tales of a Kitchen' blogger's spiralizer cookbook, with raw and cooked recipes. There are lots of spiralizer recipe books on the market, book few are actually vegan and frequently use dairy ingredients. Apart from occasional use of honey, this is a fully plant-based recipe book.

Review: Maple Water by DRINKmaple

The latest in hydration. You've tried coconut water and you've probably tried maple syrup, but have you tried maple water? It's simply the sap from the maple tree and contains 46 nutrients and is lower in sugar than coconut water. How does it taste though..?

Review: Tofurky Slow Roasted Chick'n

Faux chicken pieces in the chiller section. Launched in the UK earlier this year, we were keen to get our hands on them. They finally landed in our neighbourhood this month, so we tried out a couple of the flavours:

Guest Review: Pret's New Vegan Stuff

Pret A Manger has an exciting new veggie range and Plumes has kindly reviewed some of the vegan breakfast and lunch options for us:

I have always found Pret pretty good for vegan lunch time options with them usually having one or two options, and in the past few months one of their monthly chef's specials have been vegan so I was very excited to read the news on their website that they were expanding their vegetarian and vegan range:

Their campaign "Not Just for Veggies" (https://www.pret.co.uk/en-gb/Not-just-for-veggies#) is aimed at increasing the amount of veggie options people choose whether they are vegetarian or not. As well as increasing their vegetarian options and improving their labelling they will be turning one of their stores in Soho completely vegetarian in order to challenge their chefs to come up with exciting vegetarian and vegan options. It seems like the tides are definitely turning!

Review: More Than Meat Range

Hand-made vegan meat replacements. Burgers, sausages, casseroles and sausage rolls delivered across the UK. The products are shipped frozen and can sit in your freezer until you're ready to use them. Barry from the company gave us the opportunity to test the whole range and we jumped at the chance.

Review: Go Max Go - 2Fer Bar

Vegan Twix style bar with shortbread, caramel and chocolate. Single bar rather than twin fingers. This is the latest addition to Go Max Go's veganized range of chocolate bars. They already do passable vegan imitations of Mars, Snickers, Milky Way, Bounty and Peanut Butter Cups. The Twix bar should have been an easy one...

Review: Tesco Free-From Choc Ice Sticks

Own-brand vegan 'magnums', vanilla ice cream with thick chocolate coating. Three packs in the 'Free From' freezer section. We recently reviewed the Swedish Glace version of these and suddenly we're spoilt for choice with vegan choc ice lollies. These ones are made from lupin rather than soy:

Review: Swedish Glace 'Choc Ice' Lollies

Strawberry flavour choccy-coated soya ice creams... on sticks. 5 in a pack. These have been available for a month or two at the big supermarkets, and have appeared at the same time as some own-brand alternatives (which we'll review later).

Review: Linda McCartney's Vegan Burgers

New branding, new vegan options. Mushroom & Spinach Burgers and Quarter-pounder Vegetarian Burgers. The word 'succulent' appears on the new boxes, but it's a word we've never had cause to use in a vegan burger review until now.

Review: Rhythm Health Kefir Drinks

Cultured coconut milk shots to top up your friendly bacteria. Three delicious flavours - Mango & Passionfruit, Coconut & Pomegranate and Pure Coconut. We couldn't get hold of the Pomegranate one, but picked up the other two. Vegan kefir is still a rarity and we were keen to give these a try:

Review: Champion Soya Milk Portions

Long life jigger pots of soya milk. Individual portions. These are mini pots of long life (UHT) soya milk for use in coffee and tea. With a shelf life of 6 months, these are a perfect store cupboard staple for vegans on their travels away from civilisation (anywhere you can't get a soya latte...).

Review: Shire Snax Fruit & Nut Bars

Scottish independent producer of gluten-free, wheat-free, & dairy-free raw snacks that are low in sugar. The Edinburgh company is run by Aaron and Mitch (Michelle), and they got in touch to offer us the chance to try some samples of their wares.

Review: Flora Freedom

Dairy-free vegetable fat spread. Flora finally have a vegan margarine! It's been a long time since Flora was marketed as 'the margarine for men' (true story), and it's just as long that we've been waiting for them to ditch the dairy. Has it been worth the wait?

Review: Alpro Go On Yoghurts

New plant-based alternative to strained yoghurt, in three flavours. High in plant protein. These new luxury dessert pots from Alpro are the soya answer to CoYo's premium coconut milk yoghurts. Where they differ is the nearly 8% protein content.

Review: Badger's Dairy & Egg Free Coleslaw

Packaged vegan coleslaw with egg-free mayo from independent producer Badger's. The company has been going for a couple of years, making vegan versions of coleslaw, potato salad and egg mayonnaise. We tried all three at the Lincoln Vegan Festival this week, but the coleslaw was our favourite of the three:

Review: Rysp Snack Crackers

Vegan sourdough 'crisps' for snacking and dips. Winners of Great Taste awards last year. The makers of Rysp go by the name of PlainTasty, and Vicky from the company got in touch to offer us some samples for review. We can never turn down the opportunity for an evening of chips and dips, so naturally we said yes.

Review: Nutcrafter Creamery Cheese

More cashew based vegan cheese, this time from the Glasgow artisan producer Nutcrafter Creamery. We recently reviewed Tyne Chease and thought it would be a good idea to compare it to the competition from north of the border.

Re-Review: Tyne Chease

Reformulated and improved artisan vegan cheeses. Now without soy. In our original review of Tyne Chease last year, we had to temper our disappointment that the cheeses weren't as good as we'd hoped they'd be. Ami got in touch last month to offer us the chance to test her new soya-free recipes, and we delightedly accepted!

Review: KoKo Dairy Free Yoghurts

UPDATE: Now including the plain yoghurt

Coconut milk yoghurts which don't break the bank! CoYo and Coconut Co brands have been on the market for several years but have stubbornly stayed eye-wateringly expensive. These yoghurts are in a different price bracket, so do they lose some of the magic?

Review: Besos De Oro

Updated September 2019 - Besos de Oro has been relaunched, please see  - https://alternativeliqueurs.com/

Vegan cream liqueur made with brandy and horchata (chufa milk). The closest thing to vegan Baileys. Besos de Oro, meaning 'kisses of gold' launched in the UK last year after an award-winning debut in Spain in 2014. We had a little snifter to see if it tastes as good as it looks.