Post Punk Kitchen Forum

we had a Fresh & Wild in Bristol, but it closed in 2008. it had a cafe where they served vegan cake and i was so pissed off when we lost it :(

I went to a Whole Foods once in London somewhere, and it was okay, but I don't see why people salivate at the thought of it. It's a fairly good health food shop, but there are others than are better. Meh

yeah, to be fair I don't think Manchester is lacking anything through not having a Whole Foods branch here.

Three floors and 75,000 square feet is meh? I must come to Wiltshire- your shopping must be out of this world!

Which ones do you think are better?

I'll be honest - all that square footage doesn't really matter much if most of what they have isn't vegan. They do have a lot of vegan stuff (compared to other big boxes), but not much more compared to my little health food shop. Now if they had the stuff you could get from a WF in America, then I'd be salivating.

we should band together and do it.

Sorry, super late reply, but it was Hickory.

My second closest Indian shop has black salt for 49p a bag, I noticed today. If anyone needs it pm me.

This isn't really about hard to get items, well I suppose it is. Has anyone in the UK ever had any success with tofu omelettes? I did once with the VB ones in testing, after 2 other failures. But now whatever I do they break up. They don't stick and they look great but when I turn them or get them out of the pan they rip and collapse. Still taste great. I've tried all the brands of tofu I can think of. Any experts there? If so, which brand of tofu do you use?

I've recently tried the vegan omelette and it worked out well for me. I used this recipe http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/09/ve ... r-one.html rather than the vegan brunch one. The 2nd omelette I made with the VB recipe was drier and broke up..I used the same tofu- the asceptic packaged mori nu silken stuff so it might just be the chickpea flour/lack of binder?

I tried that FFV one too :(

I only had a problem with the very first omelet I made, and that's because I tried to cook it in a cast iron pan that wasn't properly seasoned and it stuck so badly it became scrambled "eggs". I always cook them in a regular old teflon-coated non-stick pan and use oil. I think I use a water-packed soft tofu from one of the Asian markets around here (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what I did last time I made them). But they always turn out fine.

Bummer, which brand of tofu are you using?

I've tried Mori-Nu, Taifun, a couple of chinese supermarket ones and today the new Clearspring stuff. I'm officially giving up now.

whenever i've made the VB ones, they've worked fine using mori nu silken.

It's pretty hard to get really decent fresh fruit/ veg though in Manchester, especially the city centre because there are so few independent grocers, the tomatoes in Tesco are horrid, so hard and just don't break down when you want to make a fresh sauce.

city centre aside, i disagree. well, i wouldnt know about tesco as i've not been in any of them at all in the last 5 years but in south manchester there are plenty of independent greengrocers (if you include all the asian ones in rusholme/longsight) and it's quite easy/cheap to get good quality fruit and veg. even premium places like 8th day are a load cheaper than WF would be.

My Indian shop just got a big supply of Annatto seeds if anyone needs them for VV cooking, let me know,

Can you lot get onion powder easily?

Yep, I can get it in Infinity. You want some?

I did in the past, but haven't found it recently. I've been substituting a little bit of asfoedita (hing) instead, which seems to work in the Uncheese recipes which is where I mostly use it.

Thanks for the offer, but no. I found it in a Turkish shop but I was just curious if it was widely available because I haven't seen it anywhere else.

aye, the asian grocery where i get black salt from sells it.

they usually sell it in the supermarket with all the herbs and spices! or is that something different?