Vegan..Cosmetics

Cosmetics have almost been harder for when since turning Vegan. Trying to find and suitable vegan products.

I'm going to share what I've tried and what I use!

So the first obvious choice is Lush Cosmetics. I went straight to Lush once I turned Vegan to get some new haircare. And then for Christmas, I received a lot of different products.

Lush Haircare

https://www.lush.co.uk/

Daddy-O Shampoo.

This is an all time favourite of mine. It is for blonde hair in particular to stop blondes going brassy. It is a purple shampoo that smells exactly like those purple parma violet sweets. It smells unreal and makes the shower water turn purple. Most importantly, it gives your hair a good cleanse and brings out the blonde in your hair. What I love about it most is how shiny it makes my hair. People always say how shiny it is after I use it.

Veganese Conditioner

I have only bought this once. I have very dry hair and I need a conditioner that really moisturizes my hair. Unfortunately Veganese didn't do the job. So I would recommend it for someone with greasier hair maybe. It's a shame though cause name has VEGAN in it.

Lush skincare and shower care

Angels on Bare Skin Cleanser

I was pretty disappointed with this. Left my skin feeling pretty grubby. Plus I'm not the biggest fan of lavender!

Eau Roma Water Toner

This is just a simple toner that I use after I take make up off. It feels great and I just spray some on to cotton wool. You get a lot in the bottle.

Happy Hippy Shower gel

I love this a lot! It smells lovely and is great in the morning. It's full of grapefruit and feels really fresh.

Sweet Pie Shower Jelly

This is hands down the best smelling thing ever. It smells like blackcurrant and I could smell the tub all day long. The jelly itself is a bit awkward to use and it slips everywhere. BUT if you use a shower glove it stays in place. Using this in the shower makes everything smell UNREAL!

Simple skin care.

http://www.simple.co.uk/

There has always been Simple products in my bathroom. I always knew they didn't test on animals but I found out that the majority of their products are Vegan. From what I've seen, the majority of the haircare has honey in it.

I use the cream cleanser, which I can't fault.

I always use some of the exfoliaters and other cleansers/washes. I have very dry sensitive skin and I still react badly to the products.

Naked Body Care

http://www.nakedbodycare.co.uk/

I have just discovered this range in boots after a friend mentioned it. They are a company that use 97% natural ingreidents, don't test on animals and prettty much all of their products are vegan. The vegan products are marked! The great thing is also, is that the products are reasonably priced. I find Lush products to be pretty pricey. At the moment, they are doing buy one get one free in Boots too!

So I decided to try 2 conditioners! I like my Lush Daddy O shampoo and I have a whole bottle still to use.

Naked Rescue Intensive Care Conditioner – frizzy, damaged hair

I have only used this conditioner so far and I love it! It gave me all the moister I needed from a conditioner. It leaves my hair feeling soft and clean.

I also bought:

Naked Colour Protecting Conditioner – chemically coloured hair

They have haircare for every type of hair!

Raspberry chocolate bars and Vegan findings at Howth market.

I had another crack at the vegan baking books I have. I haven't had much luck making cupcakes so far. I decided to go for something no cakey. So I decided to make Vegan chocolate raspberry bars from 'Sweet Vegan'. The recipe involves a coconutty mixture, chocolate, oats and raspberry jam. Delicious combination!

They came out so good as well. I devoured nearly all of it! I'll post up the recipe next time.

Howth Market

Instead of heading to the market in Dun laoghaire, like we do nearly every Sunday. We decided to head out to the Sunday market in Howth and make a day of it. So we headed off on the DART to howth. It was a lovely day as well but freezing. There's 2 sections of the market. The main one is across from road from the seafront area and then there's a small section just beside the dart station. We headed to the main one first. All that was there vegan wise really was falafel. So, I had a falafel wrap..was okay. I really wanted a soya lattee but off all the 3 cafes I checked, none of them had soya milk :(. Unfriendly Vegan howth.

After we headed off for a walk and came back we checked out the other part of the market. There was a vegetarian and vegan Indian food stand! Wish I had seen it before but even better they had Vegan and Vegi cakes! I was so excited. They said they usually had more but because it was late in the day, most had been bought already.

What they had left that was vegan was a slice of chocolate cake and date and walnut muffins. They had a 3 for fiver deal so I was sold! I slice of cake and 2 muffins. They didn't last very long though haha.

I never got the name of the stand either. I've tried to google it but had no luck. The cake and the muffins both tasted lovely anyway! I was over the moon with this find.

So I'm going to write about a few things on this post. Once again, I regret that most of my photos are taken on my phone, so pretty bad quality!

Pesto Pasta Bake

I've posted about this many times before, but I can't get enough of it. I just made a big one for work lunches. I've started an internship and working smack in the middle of town on Suffolk Street. I have all the best food places right on my door step. I went a bit overboard on the first week and burnt a hole in my pocket. Blazing salads right around the corner, so expensive but so hard to resist. So from now on it's packed lunches.

Pesto pasta bake has been a favorite so far to bring in, so far. Roasting up lots of red peppers, sweet potato and whatever vegetable and stiring it in with whole grain pasta and home made pesto. The roasted vegetables are so tasty and sweet. I sprinkle a little brown sugar on top of them to bring out the sweet flavours more.

I bought some nutritional yeast during the week to add into my pesto and It tastes great. I had read about it's almost cheesy taste.

I sprinkle the top with Cheezly mozzarella after, along with bread crumbs. I have grown to love the cheese.

I want to use the pesto mix it up with baby potatoes and bulgar wheat too. Yum Yum.

Shepardless Pie

Here is a picture of a shepards pie I made. It had puy lentils and veg in a tomato sauce. It tasted alright but It needs work. At least it's full of goodness. The family liked it anyway. I'm thinking of adding cheese on top along with mashing some sweet potato into the mash.

New Alpro range

I came across Alpros new Hazelnut and Almond Milk. It was on special so I went with the Hazelnut. It tastes great and I way prefere it to soya. Tastes alot like normal milk, I find. It has a great nutty and kind of chocolaty taste. It tastes absolutely great with cereal. I plan on buying this from now on.

Blazing Salads

As I mentioned before, I have to stop myself going to Blazing Salads. Costing a good 6 euro to fill a box up. It tastes sooooo goood though.

Our orange lunch

I cooked a load of food for my friends 21st during the weekend. I made us a little birthday lunch involving sweet potato wedges and cous cous. :)

Cookies

Same cookies I have posted about many times before because they are SO GOOD. These are triple chocolate ones. Dark chocolate, vegan white chocolate and the cookie it's self is chocolate. Delisssh.

And this! Orange chocolate spread. I love orange chocolate. It tastes just like terrys chocolate orange. I picked it up in Nourish on Wicklow street. Highly recommended!

London Trip and Vegan findings

I went to London for a couple days and 1 night this week. I was really excited about all the vegan restaurants in London. We were stuck for time and only made it to one though.

We came across The Whole Foods Market on Kensington High street. It was huge inside and we had a quick look. It was so exciting when I found a load of vegan baked goods and food in general. There was so much! I picked up 3 cupcakes made by Cat and the Cream. They came in little containers so I could bring them home. They were a bit pricey but when do I ever come across this! They got a bit bashed around so excuse the messy pictures.

There are Pret A Mangers everywhere in London. They are great for vegans too. They always have a vegan salad and soup. The items are labelled Vegan too. They are accommodate for vegis too really well. So many options. Last time in London we fell in love with the sweet potato and feta hot wrap.

So the vegi restaurant we made it to was Beatroot on Berwick street in Soho just off Oxford Street. Nice and Central. I really enioyed it here. You got loads for your money, so many vegan options and friendly staff. You pay 6.60 pounds for the big box and it's filled up. They really pilled it up and you got your moneys worth. They had little sausage rolls which tasted unreal. I wish I got more. There was butternut squash curry, lasagne and loads of salad.

I also got a blueberry muffin which was lovely. I could only eat half and I had the rest for breakfast.

Recent food

I am constantly taking picture of food on my phone. Everything is a bit mixed up so instead of doing a load of separate posts I thought I'd throw them all into one.

I went out to the Happy Pear today for Lunch. I went for the pitta and salad. I didn't know the pitta had goats cheese in it though so I had to take it out and eat around the left over bit. I had a lovely coffee and vegan choc fruit and nut tiffin slice. I also love going to The Happy Pear.
I had another attempt at cupcakes but with another recipe. I used the Vegan cupcakes take over the world one. I didn't have all the ingredients really though. It required corn starch but I assumed that's corn flour. It made the cupcakes taste like corn flour though. They were alright though. Still not there yet. The icing was good though!

I came across these in Dunnes Stores and HAD to get them. Orange chocolate is a favourite. They tasted really good.
Here is a salad with a Good Life nut cutlet burger. I love them and they are so quick to cook under the grill.

Linda McCartney sausages. Last week people kept mentioning breakfast rolls and I was craving sausages and beans so bad. I made this for lunch a couple times and really hits the spot. It's a nice change from salad. The sausages are so tasty and only take a few minutes under the grill.

And this is my usual lunch while at home. I eat so many falafels but I don't know what I'd do with out them.

I made more cookies recently with the usual recipe. I guessed the measurements this time as my scales was broken. I added some chocolate powder into the mixture to make double chocolate cookies and oh my god they are dangerously tasty. I eat them all :/. The trick is to almost under cook them and then let them set and you get an extremely chewy cookie as the all the sugar sets but doesn't harden from being heated.

And another 'The Counter' post. As I've said before it's a great place to go for dinner when with non vegis and it's cheap and sooooooo tasty. This is the vegi burger in a bowl with various toppings such as avocado, roasted peppers and grilled pineapples. And you NEED to get the sweet potato fries.

And this is the falafel wrap from Gourmet Burger in Dun Loaghaire. It is very very tasty. It's vegan but you just have to ask for no Harisa. I get guac instead. It is so yummy when they grill the wrap after. It comes with rosemary chips!

Puff Pastry- Samosas and Jam puffs.

I have used puff pastry a few times this week. And it's vegan!

So first of all. I made samosas for dinner tonight and they turned out great. Usually they would be made with filo pastry but the puff pastry is a lot easier to use. They turned out extremely good. I had never made them before. To make the filling, what you need is ( I don't give any mesaurements really as you can have as little or as much as you want:

But aproxameltly:

-A good handful of diced butter nut squash

-A good handful of diced carrots

-'' '' '' red onion

I baked these together in olive oil until soft.

Meanwhile:

-Blanche a handful of chopped cauliflour, Peas and pea string things.. (?) hah

- Chop some chilli and a few mushrooms and spinach.

-In a sauce pan add oil, 2 teaspoons of curry powder, 1 teaspoon of coriander and cumin seeds.

When the carrots, onion and squash are finished cooking, add everything into the saucepan and stir for a while until everything is coated.

I had falafels and some left over veg curry so I broke up some falafel into it and added a couple teaspoons of the curry to moisten it up.

I cut out about 4 large diamond shape in the rolled out pastry placed some of the mixture to one half and then folded over. Then wet the pastry a little and popped into the oven for about 20 mins.

And for the left over pastry!! Squish it all together and roll it back out flat. Cut little triangle and circle shapes out and fill with jam or chocolate or jam and peanut butter. These tasted so good!

A couple of Avoca soups.

I've had these two Avoca cookbooks for quite some time. I got the most recent one last year off Chris ( http://www.tootiredtodrivehome.blogspot.com/ ) and I've only used it once before but I used one of the soup recipes yesterday. The book is divided into seasons. Within each seasons there are soups that can mostly made vegan! There is also a vegetarian section too which is great.

I made a roast pepper and tomato soup from the first cookbook. This tasted really good. I added some ingredients like basil, chilli and garlic!

2 red peppers roasted until soft

2 onions chopped

1 litre of veg stock

2 cloved of garlic

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

some tomato puree

1 tin of tomatoes

thyme

basil

salt and pepper

About half a chilli.

So I roasted off the peppers and meanwhile, I fried off the onions until clear, added the garlic and sauteed for about a minute. I then added the tinned tomatoes, veg stock, cinnamon, tomato puree, thyme, basil, chilli and roasted peppers when they were done. Cooked for about 2o mins and then pureed. However, this only made about 3 bowls, so if you are cooking for more, double the recipe!

I also made the root vegetable and squash soup from the newest book. I wasn't to into this as the parsnip really took over.Not a big fan of parsnip in soup.