This week we’ve been busy planning the menu for our Summer Evolution season launch party – we’ve still a few places left so click through for details.
If food goes to the core of who we are then eating good food is essential to well being, sharing food helps us engage with the world around us and finding new ideas about food is a way to explore that world.
Our essential philosophy may reveal us as food obsessives – when sat around chatting our conversation circles back to it, when planning the day it’s punctuated by meal times and envisaged pit stops, when in need of comfort it’s there, or when we want to celebrate.
It’s no wonder then that when we plan an event, first we plan the menu. We like to offer bite size tasters topped with some of the condiments we sell so customers can get to know what we have in store. For the summer season launch we’ve been trying out recipes from our expanded range of vegan / plant-based cook books. With many of the recipes also being gluten free, plant-based food means that most people who come can eat something.
We’ve tried recipes from The Easy Vegan, Vegan in 7, and Leon: Fast Vegan – we’ll have a review of each of these books coming soon.
It’s been an interesting process for me. I grew up around Cafe businesses and love to cook. Luke has recently returned to being vegan, which for me is a great opportunity to explore a new avenue of food. I find the foods I like to cook most are those that are “accidentally vegan” – long standing recipes from cultures which use little dairy or meat in their everyday cuisine, such as Middle Eastern recipes or Asian recipes. These things may have been in my repertoire for a long time anyway.
Working with these books from the shop has been an interesting experience for me therefore. These books are chosen as books which aim to be easy and accessible, yet still the shopping involved finding some ingredients I’ve not used before and some of the recipes even involved a little modification where I thought necessary, but for someone who live for food, being in the kitchen is being just where I want to be.
Watch this space for more details on the books I worked with.