£100 challenge – day six

Posted: October 6, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Didn’t spend any money today, and made a nice lunch with some more of the Vegusto goodies and yesterday’s bargain cauliflower.

I had about 60g of the piquant cheese left, and wasn’t quite sure whether to combine it with mashed potato to make potato cakes, or grate it to serve on pasta, but finding the reduced-price cauliflower naturally led me to choose cauliflower cheese. I’ve also been making bread today, so decided to try some of the roll of melty cheese on a simple onion, sweetcorn and tomato pizza using the spare dough for the base. And seeing as this was Sunday lunch for two people who hadn’t had breakfast yet I fried up the sausage I was sent as well.

plate with food on it: cauliflower in white sauce that has been browned on top by being in oven, peas, an oblong slice of pizza and some sliced sausage.

And I did some peas in case that wasn’t already enough food! We were pretty stuffed after this lot!

The Vegusto cheeses didn’t melt like a dairy cheese would, but then they’re significantly lower in fat, so that’s not really surprising. The melty one did still go nice and gooey. It’s quite squishable, and I’m planning on having the rest in a sandwich as I reckon it’ll be a bit like Dairylea (Edit several hours later: I’ve  just tried this in one of my fresh-baked rolls with a dash of hot sauce. YUM! Way better than Dairylea ever was.) The taste of both of these is really very good. For the cauliflower-cheese sauce I made a white sauce from soyamilk thickened with cornflour and added a teaspoon of mustard and dash of cayenne along with a pinch of salt, but no flavouring apart from that as I wanted to see how far the cheese flavour would go, and considering 60g isn’t a great deal and you’d expect to use more dairy cheese than that in a dish that would serve four I thought it did a good job. The sausage slices were also very tasty, despite me forgetting that I hadn’t turned the gas off and slightly burning them.

Sociable Saturday – Chesters Mexican restaurant, Worcester

Posted: September 21, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last Sunday I showed you the scones I didn’t eat, and the breakfasts I did during my weekend trip to Worcester. The only other actual meal I had with friends that weekend was lunch at Chesters Mexican restaurant

Originally, we planned to go for dinner on Saturday night, but it wasn’t until Friday that we got around to trying to book a table. Oops. They could fit us in before 6 or after 9.30. We opted to go there for lunch instead.

Chesters isn’t a veg restaurant, but the vegan options are marked and there is a reasonable choice, including several puddings, which it always gladdens my heart to see, although on this occasion I didn’t get to try any of them. We dispensed with starters too, and just went for main dishes with bowls of fries and onion rings to share.

I’ve only had chimichangas once before and remembered a deep-fried, crispy parcel of deliciousness, so I went for that with a filling of six-bean chilli, which came with salsa, vegan sour cream and guacamole on the side. There was a choice of salad or fries with this and I chose the former, since we were sharing side orders. However, when it arrived I was a bit taken aback with the size of the salad compared to what I had been considering the main event. I would put it down to misconceptions about vegans all being health-conscious except my non-veg friend got an identically large bowl.

Photo showing huge salad and small chimichanga

Unfortunately, there was very little seasoning or dressing on the salad either. On the other hand I felt the salsa portion, which was well flavoured, could have stood to be doubled in size.

The chimichanga itself was thoroughly cooked, and pleasant enough, but to my curry-seasoned palate it tasted rather underspiced, nor was it the crispy greasebomb i’d been lusting after.

Fortunately, the fries and onion rings made up for this a bit, being excellently crispy, oily and delicious.

Photo of fries and onion rings

This was not a bad meal, the service was friendly and helpful, and it was very reasonably priced. If I’m visiting Worcester again I’ll definitely give their main courses another shot, but chose fries on the side instead of salad! I’d also like to try one of puddings none of us had room for this time. As you can see, we did a pretty good job with the mains.

Photo of empty plates and friends looking full of food