Category Archives: Vegetarian/Vegan

Hutch, Kirkland & Starsky

All I want is black bean soup, and you to serve it to me. I recall an episode of Starsky & Hutch, from around 1975 or ’76, which involved black bean soup. And a little song about soup. Now, I know that I should feel a modicum of shame, but I was an impressionable child. And, of course, I was only two or three at the time.

Anyway, when in Liverpool a few weeks ago, we bought some cartons of black bean soup from a most unusual shop. When sober, the soup didn’t seem very appealing, so it’d remained in a cupboard following our return home. However, after a long day in London, I decided to try some.

I used to own a couple of Kirkland signature shirts. I say used to because they perished during a wash with my second in command’s chef whites. I’ve since bought another, but don’t often wear it because it’s not as non-iron as I’d believed. It’s quite nice though.

I mention the shirts because, as I opened a carton of soup, I noticed that it too was branded Kirkland signature. I compared the carton with the label in my shirt and they were identical. It seemed unusual at first that a manufacturer would produce both shirts and soup, but, in my experience, the two do often go together.

The soup was actually ok. The heap of pepper I’d added seemed to help.

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Long weekends II

Another pretty cool long weekend involved some of my favourite pubs in both Peterborough and Newcastle. Worthy of mention are Charters and the Wortley Almshouses; the latter was visited a couple of times. Oh, and the Ostrich, where we saw a great band on Saturday evening. The following evening involved some truly nice real ale in Newcastle, from Out There, Atom and, perhaps best of all, Cloudwater. All unfined and vegan.

Peterborough via the Northwest

I’m currently sitting in my most favourite pub in Peterborough. With a delicious pint of Sam Smith’s extra stout. We’re going to our favourite curry house next.

Food’s needed more thought since I started the vegan thing. But Manchester and Liverpool made life pretty easy. The Thirsty Scholar, on Oxford Road, near the O2 Academy is a great bar, with a brilliant vegan menu.

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It’s brilliant because it’s all vegan. There’re veggie options, but the main offerings are vegan. It’s pub food, but like the chef (a great bloke called Andy) says it’s not healthy, but it’s not as unhealthy.

The food was really nice though.

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Andy (I hope that’s his name) told us about a place in Liverpool, the Egg Cafe, for which I’ll be eternally grateful. It’s a lovely place with gorgeous food.

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It’s great to know I’ve a couple of cool places to eat in a couple of my favourite cities.

Mr Oliver

In need of a starter for Christmas lunch, I stumbled across a recipe for mushroom rolls on the Jamie Oliver website. They were a bit of a faff to make, but I found the process quite enjoyable.

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They were actually really nice. And the leftover wine was good too (I only needed 100ml, but I had a couple of bottles).