dairy-free

Vegan chocolate box

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It’s that time of year when I say that I don’t celebrate Christmas but I do celebrate chocolate.

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s all celebrate this new selection box by Moo Free Chocolates.

How fabulous does this look?!

The box retails for £4.79 and includes:

  • Original Chocolate Santa Bar
  • Original Chocolate Snowman Bar
  • Mini Moos Minty Moo
  • Mini Moos Cheeky Orange
  • Original Choccy Drops

Look for this in your local retailers or order from the company direct online if you run a retail outlet.

Extra note: Moo Free Chocolates is included on the Food Empowerment Project list of trustworthy chocolate manufacturers. See the full list here.

The list reflects Food Empowerment Project’s most recent research on companies that make vegan products containing chocolate to find out if they source their chocolate from areas where slavery can still be found.

Moo Free gets the thumbs up!

Vegan in Skipton

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I love reader tips and submissions.

I can’t eat in every town on the planet, so readers sending in guest reviews and photos means this blog can report on a wider selection of experiences than would be possible if I was the only one contributing.

Take these photos from Tina as an example. When would I have ever found an opportunity to go to Skipton?

Tina sent me an email accompanied with these photos showing some of the delicious vegan food being served by The Castle Inn located in Skipton, North Yorkshire.

Check out the menu and these top food shots.

Follow The Castle Inn on Facebook and visit them soon for delicious eating.

Huge promotion for dairy-free milk

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As far as mainstream promotions for vegan alternatives go, this is one of the best I’ve heard.

Offer people a free coffee outside a busy London station but only if they take one made with oat milk. Otherwise, they have to pay £2 for a black cup of coffee. I love it!

And it gets better. This promotion is running for an entire week!

Non-dairy milk superstar Oatly is hosting a super-sized coffee giveaway on the green at Boxpark Shoreditch (just next to Shoreditch High Street Station) between Monday April 3 and Sunday April 9, 2017.

The pop will run between 11am and 7pm Monday through to Saturday, with shorter opening times of 11am until 5pm on Sunday.

But what is going on at the marketing event?

Members of the public will be invited to watch skilled baristas create top quality coffees using the Oatly Barista Edition. Once they have been shown how to make the hot drinks to perfection and given a chance to win an Oatly t-shirt, they will then be given the coffee free of charge.

Oatly is undertaking this huge week-long advertising campaign to convince people that coffee without dairy milk is not a scary prospect and that it can actually be delicious.

Oatly will be pushing the message that choosing oat milk over dairy is a kinder, more compassionate choice that also has huge benefits for the environment.

The best part of the promotion happens when someone rejects the coffee with oat milk and asks for a black coffee.

Anyone refusing to try a coffee made with Oatly will be asked to pay £2 for a cup made black.

I absolutely love this cheeky approach to promoting plant-based alternatives to dairy. It is a sly payback for the countless times vegans have been asked to pay extra to get a dairy-free drink in coffee shops all over London.

You can wish Oatly well with their promotion over on Twitter and get along to the pop-up coffee shop in Shoreditch next week. You might even win one of these cute Post Milk Generation t-shirts in their giveaway.

Take some non-vegans friends with you. Free coffee might just be the thing that gets them to consider the switch!

New vegan ice creams in London!

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Oh dear. I don’t want these new vegan ice creams, I seriously NEED them.

I have written about Juice Baby in the past. This small food provider on impossibly ritzy King’s Road in West London is home to a delicious raw taco bowl and the most glorious caramel slice (read about the eatery here).

News has just reached me of the brand new addition to the Juice Baby line up and if you don’t mind, I’d rather let the photo do all the talking.

I’m not being hysterical when I say they might very well be the finest vegan ice creams I have ever set my chubby eyes upon.

Juice Baby has just moved to the number one spot on places I must visit as soon as I return to London in July. Please dear readers, don’t eat them all before I get there.

Follow Juice Baby on Instagram.

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How much is too much?

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I like to buy vegan food and I have the perfect excuse. This blog.

When I see something new in the supermarket, I usually justify the expense by telling myself I have a duty to my readers to share the information.

It is rare for something I want to not end up in my shopping basket and you are all to blame!

But yesterday I hit a wall. Would you pay the asking price for these seasonal chocolates? I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

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Delicious vegan chocolate

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It’s a tough life as a fat, gay vegan. There are so many people wanting to send me vegan chocolate to sample, it’s a tiresome chore.

When Essy & Bella asked if I would take some of their gourmet, handcrafted vegan chocolate to try, I reluctantly agreed. I’m such a selfless person.

Want the quick, time-saving review? Buy Essy & Bella if you enjoy delicious things going into your mouth.

Now for the part where I go on for a little while.

The sunflower seed & sea salt and peppermint & cacao varieties are irresistible. Made with rice powder, they are a milk free version of a milk chocolate.

The peppermint & cacao was my favourite and I would buy it in a heartbeat. It truly was one of those moments where you open a packet and you can’t stop eating.

I don’t think you will currently find Essy & Bella in shops around the country, but fortunately for you the entire range of vegan chocolate bars is available to buy via their website.

Click here to check out all the flavours, including the ridiculously delicious sounding lime and sea salt. I need that so badly.

You can also follow Essy & Bella on Twitter.

Extra note: Essy & Bella are located in Newcastle where vegan stuff is going wild including this restaurant, this vegan cheese company and even the Vegan Roadshow.

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Chocolate recall

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Hotel Chocolat in the UK have actioned a recall of their ‘milk free milk’ products. Here is the main statement from the company as posted on their website:

Clarification on the dietary status of ‘Milk Free Milk’

We are very sorry that we haven’t made it clear enough who can eat our Milk-Free Milk and who can’t. We did take advice (including labelling advice from Trading Standards) before we launched it, but the fact that some misunderstanding exists shows us that we were not clear enough. Please have a look at our comprehensive Q&A. Thanks to dietary groups who have made contact and offered advice, which we are using.

The full Q&A statement about the recall can be seen here.

It is that old argument about calling something dairy free when there is a small possibility of trace elements of milk proteins due to dairy being used in the same factory.

Of course this could be problematic for people with allergies, but Hotel Chocolat want vegans to know there are no dairy ingredients added to this milk free range.

How do you feel about the ‘may contain traces’ labelling? Does it stop you from buying a product?

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Eat an egg

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Have you got £15 burning a hole in your pocket? Get into your nearest Hotel Chocolat for this gourmet vegan Easter egg.

Made with almond powder, this decadent dairy-free egg is accompanied by chocolate bites packed with fruit and nuts. I was tempted, but just couldn’t bring myself to part with that sort of cash for an Easter egg.

What do you think? Is that crossing a price line you would never step over?

egg vegan easterYou can see the egg via the online Hotel Chocolat shop.

If you do take the plunge and shell out for this vegan egg, please let me know how if it is fabulous. I could still be swayed!

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Still vegan?

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Do you ever buy the Dairy Free Sunflower Spread from Marks and Spencer? I wrote about the awesome vegan labelling of this product a year ago, but things seem to have changed since then.

It is no longer labelled as vegan. What gives?

My partner Josh reached out to the company via Twitter to see if he could get some answers. This is what he was told:

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