My fave veggie cafe is closing and other bits

The end of an era looms as my favourite veggie cafe in Bridlington, The Little Organic Bakery (formerly Bean There), is closing sometime in September. My friends who own it are going in to semi-retirement and looking forward to doing other things now they have their first grand child.

It's a real shame but nothing stands still and I have some lovely memories of happy times with friends and food from my trips to the cafe over the years.
Today was such a day, I met up with two dear old work mates and we went for one last pig out with Bob in tow too. We basked outside in the garden for a while until it got a bit breezy and then moved inside for food.

A delicious black olive tart with salad was munched through at great speed and washed down with dandelion and burdock.

Followed by a chocolate slice and a few things to take away in a bag for supper!
The good news is, the cafe is being taken over and going in to safe hands with a couple who are going to carry on with veggie food so I will probably get to try that before the year is out.

The bank holiday is nearly here and I have the annual Hornsea Pottery Nostalgia day to attend tomorrow. All weekend rows of tables piled high with vintage Hornsea will be for sale, I can't wait to see if any rarities appear.

Shocked to see Christmas fabrics have already appeared in our local Boyes shop, actually I think I've seen a few Christmas things popping up in the shops this month.

Lastly, we had a fox visiting recently, this was my best picture looking out of a grubby window at him, he usually comes when it's a bit darker so I never manage a shot but I got a really good view of him this time, looks in great condition. Hope he survives with all the idiots round these parts shooting who would probably take pleasure in putting an end to him.

Keep safe mr fox and have a good weekend everyone.

January making and buying

It's been ridiculously cold in the house the last fortnight and I've been making 'house scarves' and buying more long johns. Honestly I think I could set up a shop selling long johns I have so many pairs!

With it being so cold I drop into the same routine at this time of year by doing less challenging crafts whereby I can wrap myself up in layers, not think too much and just knit or crochet very simple things. You can't get much more simple than loom knitting and I started some neck warmers on the circular loom.

There is something quite satisfying about the speed you can create something and here is my first neck warmer.

This pink neck warmer was quickly followed by this bluey one, although not done on the loom but hand knitted.

I'm not much of a knitter but I have got this item on the go also at the moment, it's some sort of scarf / cowl with some interesting wool I bought in Whitby.

Continuing with scarves, this time crochet. I found a Youtube video showing how to do a type of moss stitch for crochet, it was a very good and easy to follow tutorial by Olivia at Girlybunches who has some great crochet videos.

http://girlybunches.com/

A scarf in moss stitch is a good way to use up small scraps of wool.

I didn't want tassels on the end as it's a fairly short scarf to tuck into a coat so not the neatest of finishing off at the ends but it's a nice stitch to do.

Had some of my fabric back from the printers, the Scandi Trees design, and I've sold a bit on ebay.

With some Christmas money I bought myself a nice quality rotary cutter. Previously I had a £3.99 one and it was useless but spending a bit more on this Olfa cutter is proving great for accurately and neatly cutting my fabric.

I bought some more Harris Tweed last week from the weaving lady on Harris and I'm in the throws of creating some textile jewellery and a tweed needle case.

Another needle case I've recently completed in the book style is this one, made with scraps of hand loom cotton from the Skye Batiks shop on Skye which I believe have recently taken delivery of a new batch of my designs on some garments.

Back to crochet, I found a pattern in a recent magazine for crochet buttons and I turned the basic idea into pin cushions.

Thanks for sticking with all these photos, I'll finish with some food just ahead of Burns Night. Joy of joys I found the veggie haggis had made a welcome return to Morrisons, more of a sausage shape to previous years but will make a lovely, hearty feast.

A week in Scotland: Eating & drinking

We spent last week in Scotland and Bob the Bunny visited some lovely new places in Edinburgh, Perth, Aberfeldy and Inverness.
We start our eating and drinking by seeking out a newly opened veggie place in Perth called Spring Greens Bistro.

A lovely little place and I think the highlight after a tasty light bite starter was the dessert. We found rocky road with vegan marshmallows, yum, and below you can see their version of a 'healthy' granola style peanut butter cup, very moreish!

The next day we went to Edinburgh and on the list of things to do was seek out a particular coffee shop who do fab coffee of course and a good range in veggie food. The place was Brew Lab and the plan didn't exactly go smoothly.

It was pouring with raining and we had a long way to walk to find this place, near to a college. Of course we got there very wet and it was full of students, there was no room whatsover to stay and eat so we had to make do with a take out brew  (which was nice) and a long walk back to Princes St. Now I don't object to it being full of students but I do get a bit mad when I see them all sat at the tables, laptops open not buying any food and probably only bought one drink which has been consumed hours ago in order for them to stay there and use the free WiFi. I also felt very old and uncomfortable in that environment so I comforted myself by saying if there had been some space, I would've no doubt felt very awkward sitting and feasting alongside the young people.

Here are some Brew Lab pics.

Slightly more successful on the Edinburgh trip was a visit to Hendersons, this place is often to referred to as Scotland's first veggie restaurant, dating back to 1962. It was huge  so we easily found a table and we didn't feel old in here so big tick!

It was quite late in the day so we just had a little salad bowl followed by a rather tempting vanilla gateau with fresh fruit.

Onwards and upwards north to Aberfeldy, I've saved the jewel in the coffee crown until last. One of our coffee friends has a cafe called the Habitat in Aberfeldy and it sits nicely in prime position in the square.

The cafe has won the BSA (Beverage Standards Association) National Award for Best Espresso in the UK 2013, this is a fabulous achievement as they've only been open a year. We couldn't wait to get inside and offer our congratulations but what a shame, our friend was off that day, maybe he'd run off if he'd heard we were coming! 

Not to worry, the staff made us wonderful coffees, I enjoyed this brew followed by a delicious flat white and then of course an amazing Costa Rican espresso.

We also tried the food, the feta salad was lovely and then I tried some gingerbread which seemed to go very well with my coffee.

I liked the Habitat Cafe, nice atmosphere and Aberfeldy is a lovely place with some quirky little shops and galleries.

Lastly, but there's no food pic, we found a little whole food, organic cafe in a natural therapy centre at the other side of this bridge in Inverness.

It was a bit more of a socks and sandally sort of place, tiny, but we had a lovely sweet potato and coconut curry.

I think that's it for our eating and drinking around Scotland, thanks for sticking with me to the end!

Long weekend in South Lakes & Lancaster

I had planned a weekend in the Lakes a few weeks back as a belated birthday getaway for myself as my birthday had occurred mid week during Feb and it wasn't practical to do anything back then.

I left it really late to actually make a booking in my attempt to source a bargain on LateRooms. It seems no matter how last minute I look at LateRooms I never seem to find a real bargain these days.

I actually ended up booking the Travel Lodge at Kendal for a cheap couple of nights.

It worked quite well as a location because I wanted to visit Lancaster and it was only 20 mins away.

Why Lancaster, well at the risk of being a coffee bore, Lancaster is home to J. Atkinson & Co. Coffee Roasters who supply one of my favourite coffee shops in York, Spring Espresso. J. Atkinson also have 2 cafes in Lancaster in lovely old buildings which they have brought back to life.

The building / cafe below is called The Music Room. I'm sure it will be lovely sat outside in this courtyard on a summers day.

You won't be surprised to see Bob's little face pop up at the sight of a lovely flat white!

Below is J Atkinsons shop, step inside and it's like stepping back in time. There are packets of tea and coffee in little brown paper bags, an old wooden counter, little wooden drawers full of interesting things, coffee sacks, tea chests, all sorts of vintage memorabilia, it's wonderful.

Next door to their shop is the other cafe called The Priory Hall and inside I sampled a coffee brewing process I hadn't tried or seen before. This is the vacuum method of brewing coffee via a siphon pot.

You can see the burners lit as the water is heated and the coffee grinds added.

Below, the coffee is then allowed to bloom and infuse, about 2 - 3 minutes before being poured. Each pot below gives a good mug full of coffee. I had a lovely, floral Ethiopian coffee, the cost was very reasonable to watch this bit of 'coffee magic' take place at £2.60 each.

You can see that no food has been consumed yet on this trip, hold on, I had researched that too before setting off on this journey.

I read up on a vegetarian cafe in Lancaster called the Whale Tail Cafe.

As often is the case when seeking out a veggie cafe, many I've been to are down alleyways and not much to look at outside and it was like this with the Whale Tail.

However, venture up the steps and fight your way for a table and you will be rewarded with a wonderful feast.

This is my platter of Whale Tail salads, homemade hummus, a big tub of olives and pitta's. The picture doesn't quite reveal how big or deep my salad dish was, it seemed I would never reach the bottom of the bowl! I have to say it's been one of my best bowls of unusual salad dishes ever. 

I couldn't finish everything so I really couldn't have a pudding but they looked fab.

The Whale Tail have a cookbook so I've bought that as most of the salads are in.

I hadn't been to Lancaster before but I like it, nice place with good food and coffee.

http://www.whaletailcafe.co.uk/

Drove up to Keswick on Saturday, the weather had turned wet and remained so all day with bitterly cold winds.

Still wet in Windermere in the afternoon but very busy down by the lake and I don't like crowds so we carried on to another place on my to do list, Cartmel, home of sticky toffee pudding.

But more importantly, Cartmel Coffee, who also use Atkinsons beans.

There was a lovely warm glow inside on this wet day and I had an enormous rosewater meringue with my tasty coffee.

You can see that Bob passed out at the sight of my huge meringue!

Cartmel was very lovely but I imagine it will be heaving with tourists in summer so this was probably a good time to catch it.

By Sunday morning there had been a good dusting of snow on the fells and it was time to head back. It had been lovely to get away and I know Travel Lodges are hardly luxurious but they are much warmer than the house here so I really appreciated not having all my layers of vests and jumpers on for a couple of days!