I ♥ Paris - Final post

First things first: I'd like to ask susansoltis, the lucky winner of the book The Vegan Girl's Guide to Life, to contact me as soon as possible.


Now, back to my trip to Paris. I know you might think that three posts for a couple days in Paris is too much but I went to really good places and I like to read detailed reviews about vegan options around the world, they always help me when I'm traveling and I wanted to do the same, with a lot of photos too. On Sunday we did more sight see and went to the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral before lunch. Then we met Sabine to go to Maoz.

I will open a very important parenthesis here to say that I love falafel and it's one of the easiest vegan options to find around the world and that EVERY SINGLE TIME that I eat a falafel sandwich I remember my BFF Filype. He's Brazilian and he lives in Santos and I wish he lived close to me and that we could travel together and hang out every day. But it's not possible so I keep myself happy thinking about him in good moments (L). And I know he LOVES falafel as much as I do or even more. And I'm sure that he would be the happiest person on earth if there was Maoz in Brazil.

Unfortunately I was too busy filling my sandwich a million times and chatting with Sabine (L) to take pictures but you can have an idea checking Maoz website. The place is vegetarian and if you eat there you can fill your sandwich with the options they have in the buffet. Another great advantage of Maoz is that it's opened until late in the night, being a perfect option for after a late hang out.

After eating as much as we could we went to a ice cream shop that was supposed to have vegan chocolate ice cream but they don't have it during the winter. We had coffee and said goodbye to Sabine. And it was time for more sight see: Sacré-Cœur Basilica and Moulin Rouge.



And after this it was time for our last food stop in Paris: Tien Hiang, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Once again the food was amazing (if you like fried stuff, have to say) and the price was decent. Matteo ate so much that I couldn't believe!

First, me learning (better late than never) the proper way to eat spring rolls:

Now the rest of the food (check their menu here, it's huge!): Just one important note: the restaurant is quite small, most of the people take away. But if you arrive there early like we did you'll find a table to enjoy your meal there!

That's it! Go to Paris and enjoy the vegan food! I have not enough words to thank Aurelia for the amazing weekend we had and I can't wait to see her again.




Tien Hiang
92, rue du Chemin Vert
75011 PARIS
Opening hours: 11h30 to 15h and 18h30 to 22h30


I ♥ Paris - Part I
I ♥ Paris - Part II

I ♥ Paris - Part II

Our first day in Paris was perfect for the food. It was a rainy day but it wasn't cold. We didn't saw many touristic places but we went to the Louvre and walked a lot around there to burn some of the calories we had consumed at Loving Hut (see first post about Paris here) and we took some rest in the beautiful Jardin des Tuileries eating some amazing olives stick bread!




Aurelia took as to Saveurs Végét'Halles for dinner. We were surprised when we got there for two reasons: first we have been there in 2007 but the placed used to be La Victoire Supreme du Coeur. I have to say that I loved even more the new restaurant. The menu is larger, with more vegan options (it is a vegetarian and vegan place) and the price is more decent (or at least the meals are bigger). The second surprise is that we met a friend that used to live in Dublin. It was really amazing and a good surprise!

One more time, we had amazing food. We asked different dishes again to enjoy as much as we could:

Entrees:

Crudités et Tofu
(raw vegetables with sesame tofu)

Omelette Végét’Halles, épinard-champignon

(Végét' Halles Omelet, spinach-mushroom)

Terrine de champignon avec sa confiture d’oignon
(mushroom terrine with onion jam)

Plats:

Rôti de champignon avec sa sauce mûre et ginbembre
(Mushroom Roasted with blackberry and ginger sauce)

Escalope de seitan avec sa sauce aux champignons

(Seitan Steak with mushroom sauce)

Dessert:

Crème au Chocolat

They have some good deals for lunch and evening, don't forget to check them on the menu (they are in the last page, not in the first one!). And they are opened from 11h30 to 3pm and from 6pm to 11pm.


Saveurs Végét'Halles
41 Rue Des Bourdonnais
75001 Paris
Tel: 01 40 41 93 95

Happy (vegan) St. Patrick's Day

Go green! Go vegan ;-)

In 2009 I spent my first St. Patrick's day in Dublin and I was supposed to cook Colcannon (mashed potato and cabbage), but I didn't as you can read here. This year we're staying home and I'm cooking something like a colcannon. I started my day finishing these cupcakes and now I'm back to the kitchen!

I ♥ Paris - Part I

I went to Paris in 2007 for the first (and only) time until this weekend. I had amazing memories about the city but not too much about the (vegan) food. Four years later Paris is a way more vegan friendly and I had the best weekend ever there.

The first reason for having such a good time wasn't the food though. I went there with Matteo to meet Aurélia, my little sister. She is not my real sister, but she is like a sister. I have just one brother and the idea of having a younger sister sounds amazing to me. I use to say that friends are even better than family cause we choose them. And two years ago life gave me this amazing friend-sister that I love from the bottom of my heart and every time I meet her is just perfect. She won't be that closer after July (she's moving to Canada) and I wanna see her as much as I can until there. She made an amazing plan for our weekend, including vegan food and sight see.



I'll write at least three posts about the places we went in Paris cause I have a lot of pictures that I want to share. Our first stop was

Loving Hut



Loving Hut is in a lot of countries (also in Brazil now, in São Paulo) and I always heard different opinions about the restaurants. It seems that some of them are amazing and others aren't that great. They are independent from each other so the menu changes a lot. But the one in Paris is now in my Top 10 favourite vegan restaurants for sure.

The place is amazing, the staff is nice (and they speak English) and the food is divine and 100% vegan (or végétalien). I won't complain about the price because I think it was decent for Paris standards. We asked for different starters and main courses to enjoy as much as we could of the menu.

Entrees:

Joyeux croustillant

Pépites dorées

Accompagnement:

Riz arc-an-ciel

Plats:

Quiche végé bonheur avec salade composée

Crêpes aux champignons & salade composée

Dessert:

The hugest banana split ever

Loving Hut
92 Boulevard Beaumarchais
75011 Paris 11e arrondissement, France
01 48 06 43 84

(vegan) Pancake Tuesday

Savory pancakes/crepes with
seitan white sauce filling

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Shrove Tuesday is more commonly know as Pancake Tuesday or Pancake Day. And to be honest, this year I heard some of my Brazilian friends talking about this "pancake day" but I've never heard about it when I was living there (maybe it was just me being a dumb...). Well, since I'm living in Dublin, I wouldn't let pass one more opportunity to cook and eat pancakes.

I was thinking about breakfast pancakes but it didn't happen, so I did crepes/savory pancakes for lunch and a "special edition" for dessert. I thought I would explode after eating all them but it was 100% worth it.

Unfortunately I didn't heard about any place/restaurant in Dublin making vegan pancakes. Hopefully next year!

Peanut butter butter cream frosting
cherry and berries jam
soy cream

Congrats, you won!

Today is the day to reveal the lucky winner of Melisser's amazing book The Vegan Girl's Guide to Life! And what a perfect day to give someone a book full of girl's experiences! Happy International Women's Day :)

I'd like to shout a BIG thanks to Melisser for all the inspiration and for helping on spreading the word about the giveaway. And thanks everybody that entered the giveaway! I hope you keep reading my blog if you just discovered my page cause of the giveaway :)

So, here we go!



The winner is susansoltis! Congrats and please contact me cause I don't have your email.



It was really good for me to read the answers to the giveaway question: what's the hardest topic on veganism to find information about. It seems that food is now the easiest topic (except for countries such as Brazil where a lot of things still need to change to make vegan's life better) and that there are many doubts related to non-food issues (tattoo ink, medical products, house cleaning products, personal care products and cosmetics, etc). With everybody doing blogs about vegan food, some other aspects still need a lot of attention and information on-line.

To give a little help to the readers, one great link: cruelty-free shopping guide!

Baby steps into the vegan raw universe

If you're an "old" reader of this blog, you might remember that I'm not too much into salads and that I do an effort to eat more vegetables. But since 2009, when I wrote the blog post about it, I've been eating a lot more vegetables and salads (just salads, not into burgers or with other food to cover the vegetables taste) and I'm happy with it. But I still prefer cooked vegetables than raw ones. Last week I had an amazing experience that made me know a little bit more about the vegan raw universe.

We had a guest at home that has being vegan raw for two years now. When I first realized he's raw I thought that it would be hard to cook to him and to take him out in Dublin because I knew very little about vegan raw options around. But it wasn't that hard (I sound like people that think being vegan is the hardest thing in the world!) and I could learn a lot and discover some new pleasures and options in Dublin.

Cornucopia has always some vegan raw options in their salads. Thumbs up to them! Blazing Salads is another amazing place to find great salads and they also sell the delicious Nakd raw bars (love them). More thumbs up! But our best discover was Natasha's Living Food. I had eaten one of her cakes before and it was amazing but I didn't know nothing about her or her products. I called her to see if she has a store but she doesn't (yet). We were supposed to go to her place, where she produce the stuff but we couldn't make it this time. But her products can be found in a lot of places in Dublin and I found quite a lot of them at Nourish (Wicklow Street). Everything looks delicious. Check it out if you have the chance.


Besides that we got a lot of nuts and for the last night my friend was here we decided to do a dinner party at home with some other friends of the vegan group ALiberation. I decided to cook brazilian vegan feijoada to the non-raw guests and during the day I walked with my friend around Dublin and we got some amazing raw stuff.



First we went to the Dublin Food Co-op. They have great stuff there and the staff is great. I got organic red peppers and zucchini. And we also went to a street market close to South William Street to buy olives and artichokes. Everything was delicious and I had a great night with good friends that share same values: veganism and animal rights. The guys also brought their dogs and the apartment was full of life.



After these days learning more about vegan raw I have to admit that I became very interested in the option and that I'm doing an effort to learn more recipes and to eat more raw food in general.


P.S. Today is the last day to enter the blog giveaway and have a chance to win a copy of The Vegan Girl's Guide to Life, by Melisser Elliott.